Former chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation K. Kasturirangan was tasked with heading an eight-member panel to draft the National Education Policy (NEP) in 2017. With the changes that have taken place in education over the past decades, the existing policy was inadequate, so the new one seeks to reorient towards the new normal. Kasturirangan and Leena Chandran-Wadia, member of the drafting committee, spoke to THE WEEK about the way forward. Excerpts:
Q/ What, according to you, is the cornerstone of NEP 2020?
A/ The policy is an end-to-end roadmap for the country, flexible yet integrated, with a singular focus on quality education - quality educational institutions, curriculum and pedagogy, and teachers who are empowered with training and support.
Q/ Are there any major recommendations which the committee suggested but which do not reflect in the NEP 2020?
A/ The policy in its final form reflects the recommendations of the committee, both in letter and spirit. Some details are different, of course, but as the policy went through major reviews by different groups of stakeholders from the Central and state governments, and eventually by the Prime Minister himself a few times, the fact that it is still preserved, speaks volumes about our efforts. We are very satisfied and happy with the outcome.
Q/While most have welcomed the policy changes, they voice concerns over implementation. Your comments.
A/ Implementation of this policy at the size and scale of effort that is needed has not been attempted previously. However, in the past four decades, we have taken up several initiatives in other sectors, for example, space sector, where we have put in considerable investment, been ambitious, taken risks, and succeeded. This clearly shows that we can do it. We will need a change of mindset and culture among all stakeholders so that we can attend to everything – the need for human resources, infrastructure, management, finances.
Given India’s projected economic strength of becoming a ten trillion-dollar economy by 2030-32 and taking its place as the third largest economy in the world, we are confident that over the coming ten-year period, we will be able to invest substantially into education. The policy sets out an ambitious vision and provides a flexible framework within which all stakeholders – governments, management of institutions, faculty, researchers, educators, educationists and civil society – anyone who cares about education, can step forward to work together and ensure the desired outcomes.
Q/ With the multidisciplinary approach to subjects in school, will the content for entrance exams to professional courses like NEET and JEE also have to change presently?
A/ The prerogative of changing the content of entrance exams rests solely with the institutions that conduct these examinations. That said, it is very likely that they will respond to the important changes that are coming in due to the implementation of the policy. Students will always be able to opt for the subject combinations they need to help them compete in these exams. The number of students taking these two entrance exams, put together, is only a small fraction of the total number of students passing out of Grade 12 (approximately 25%). The remaining students can benefit enormously from the choice of courses they will have.
Q/ The private sector feels that the policy should have also allowed for private funds to be injected into education, apart from the PPP model and philanthrophic model. Your comments.
A/ There is already considerable private sector investment in education. Nearly half of all students in school education, over 120 million students, study in private schools. Over 45 percent of these are in budget schools and pay less than Rs 500 per month. In higher education, the participation is much higher, with private sector accounting for 78 per cent of all institutions and 69 per cent of all enrolment. All of these institutions are working under the non-profit model as per law, but we know that they use well known ways to extract profits. It is important to highlight that the education sector is not really amenable to the for-profit model. Quality education requires constant re-investment into academics - upgradation of laboratories, libraries and other infrastructure, introduction of new courses, investments in training of teachers, funding for research and more. If the re-investment is not done, quality suffers, as it is doing in India. This is also evident from countries such as the United States, where for-profit institutions co-exist with the non-profit institutions and the latter far outstrip the quality of the former.
Q/ Will the traditional three-year degree continue along with the four-year BLA, or will the three-year degree system ultimately be phased out?
A/ No there is no such thinking within the policy. The three-year degree is being offered by all higher educational institutions now, and many may decide to continue with it since it is likely that this will be an attractive option for a large number of students. Each year of undergraduate education adds to the costs that has to be borne by parents. The four-year degree has therefore been introduced as an additional option that some institutions may be willing to offer.
Q/ How long do you think it will take for the new curricula in schools and colleges to roll out, and how long will it take to retrain teachers for their new roles?
A/ The new National Curricular Framework for School Education (NCFSE) and a similar National Curricular Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE) are both already under preparation.
The NCFTE is being prepared by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and is expected to be ready by 2021.
The NCFSE will be prepared by National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) is likely to be ready by 2022-23.
The curriculum for school and teacher education will follow only after each of these frameworks is ready, so we are looking at an interval of 2-3 years at the earliest. In the meantime, the NCF 2005 can continue to be used since it embodies the core principles articulated in this policy.
We don’t need to wait for all this to be ready to initiate retraining of teachers. We can begin immediately, because teachers need to understand and assimilate the spirit and the content of this policy.
Q/ What do you see as the biggest stumbling block in achieving the objectives of this new policy?
A/ There are several stumbling blocks, but the biggest challenge comes from the present mindset and the culture among the people who are involved in education. There is a large gap between the approach and attitudes of people, relative to what the policy implementation requires it to be, and this gap needs to be bridged at the earliest.
There are a variety of roles and responsibilities, also in governance/ administration of education, that needs to be approached with a ‘can-do’ attitude. Everyone will need to re-look at the way we teach and shape the lives of students, evaluate them, govern/administer institutions, and discard entrenched viewpoints that have not worked so far and do not belong in the future. The success of policy implementation will depend on all concerned stakeholders - officials in government departments at the Centre and the states, management of institutions, and teachers – being willing to adopt a new way of thinking, guided by the spirit of the policy.
Leadership is a critical part of this. We need a large number of teachers and leaders to work towards such a mindset change and to carry along everyone who cares about education, so that a movement is created towards bringing out the best in each individual student. The flexible framework of the policy has room for experimentation and exploration of new ideas from everyone. For instance, Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is the starting point of the reforms in school education and it is imperative to get this done correctly in all aspects such as curriculum, pedagogy, re-training of teachers. Not succeeding in ECCE will have a cascading impact on all the later stages.
Q/ Do you think the NEP will be able to control the paralled industry of commercialisation of education – the coaching classes and private tuitons?
A/ Coaching classes thrive on the paucity of good opportunities for students, forcing them to compete very hard. NEP is aiming to raise the overall quality of education offered by most institutions. This will ensure that an adequate supply of good opportunities is created reducing the excessive competition.
The NEP is also trying to do away with rote learning and focus on education that helps students discover their own interests/ passion and develop them , while also picking up critical competencies such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration, and multiple additional literacies (such as financial, ICT, scientific, cultural and civic literacy). When the teaching methods and concomitant evaluation strategies change so much, coaching will also become redundant. Students who receive such an education will not just be employable but will also have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs.
Q/ Although the policy work may have started ahead of the pandemic, how much have lessons of the pandemic been incorporated into the policy?
A/ Two big challenges that arose due to the sudden shift towards online education were: i) the lack of adequate internet connectivity and access to devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, and ii) the readiness of teachers for making the shift. Many teachers themselves do not have good quality access and many have not received any training for teaching online.
The Policy already contains several important recommendations for addressing this:
1) Providing internet access and devices to educational institutions, teachers and students
2) Training and support to teachers for preparing rich content and for sharing them through content repositories.
3) The creation of a National Educational Technology Forum (NETF) to help educational institutions select the platforms, software and tools that can be used by them and their teachers
4) Provision for making content available in regional languages.