Written by Asish Sridhar
Edited by Ritika Illustrated by Shresha Kumar
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The National Education Policy 2020 is touted as a grand vision to transform conventional education in India. If you ask a student of my age what is wrong with Indian schools, a common answer would be rote-learning and mugging-based tests. The NEP is a grand and widespread scheme which is, according to the official government website, an attempt to transform India into a knowledge superpower. With an endless amount of YouTube videos, free resources, and coaching becoming almost a compulsion for students, the government also seeks to release its own free educational platform. COVID-19 also inadvertently led to accelerated digitisation of education. NEP seeks to bring application-oriented education and teach job-ready skills to students. Vocational and skill-based education also seems to be having a significant upgrade as students in 11th and 12th are offered integrated practical courses and presented with many options for skill-based training.
Institutions across India have taken various approaches to the framework. “Different institutes have been very creative in the way they want to progress towards their ultimate goal,” Vikas Iyer says. “Some have started offering multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary courses, while others have changed their pedagogy to bring in experiential learning and critical understanding skills. Some have increased their investment and have flowed into research and innovation, while others pursued internationalisation.”
Vocational-based education also seems to be having a significant upgrade.
There are two main features- One is the credit system being made with a credit bank to organise educational qualifications and the introduction of opening and exit points. The other is breaking traditional distinctions between courses and a “multi-disciplinary” approach.
STEM-related courses seem to be enjoying more significant benefits due to their objective nature being more complementary to NEP. Schools are also considering adding coding to 6th-grade students’ curriculum. This is because science and coding-based roles are easier to measure and easier for recruiters to hire candidates based on qualifications of more specific criteria suited for roles. The introduction of coding also seems to be a response to the rise in interest in AI, machine learning, and data science.
However, on the other hand, the “promise” offered by colleges in terms of a degree seems to be falling off, and companies are looking for more “experience” when hiring new candidates. The freedom to study your passion, in theory, sounds great, but it will cost college education in two ways:
By ensuring holistic and free education, colleges have a greatly lessened responsibility to ensure quality education to the students as the course outcomes of students are less specific and measurable. Hence, the concept of a “degree” will fade away and students no longer have the promise or guarantee of work as they did before.
This would automatically assume that the student is more self-aware and knowledgeable of what field they are interested in and how to make optimum choices for their education. It prioritises freedom of choice over optimised education.
NEP also faces criticism from state governments as it does not consider their autonomy in offering selective education. For example, state-based content in history and languages.
“NEP has faced stiff opposition from students, parents, teachers and lecturers. BJP has sacrificed the interests of the students from the State by implementing the NEP in the State on an experimental basis, which is not implemented in all States,” Mr. Siddaramaiah alleged.
The Congress announced that it would not implement the NEP in the State, and this was reiterated in the Budget. Instead, the government would formulate a new education policy. Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar had dubbed NEP the “Nagpur Education Policy”, referring to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur city. He had argued that the NEP violated the rights of the State. This was a reaction after states quickly adopted NEP to find that they were not ready to handle it.
Since the concept of NEP is still in an experimental stage, students have become guinea pigs to the policy, either offering freedom to students or compromising on their quality (as the natural progression system of courses no longer applies and courses will be designed and catered to beginners, due to mandatory prerequisites not being taken up). The 3-year or 4-year college courses along with the fixed 11th and 12th courses, have been there for many decades and have had a chance to get refined and optimised to be able to become complete "packages" for jobs.
On the other hand, the currently practised or replaced education system has also aged and no longer represents the current job market. NEP 2020 was conceptualised after the rapid digitalisation observed during COVID-19, in which online learning platforms like BYJUs were able to establish themselves and saw a bucketload of free content via youtube channels and teachers like physics wallah. This policy came before AI software like ChatGPT and Gemini existed, so the education sphere is only going to change more as it adapts to the upcoming AI revolution. Assignments created for school and college have to be remade and restructured with AI-based tools in mind, which allow for an unbelievable reduction in data collection and compilation and students can now focus on application and integration of their learning.
Satish Deshpande had a perspicacious insight into NEP and noted that multiple exit options “will certainly help in renaming drop-outs as certificate or diploma-holders. But they cannot ensure that these credentials will benefit holders significantly.”
Pramod K Nayar, in a Wire article, also had some interesting things to say- “Are the students’ states of vulnerability being prised wide open when neoliberal restructuring offers freedom of exit options and freedom to choose any combination of courses without core disciplinary training in the guise of multi- and interdisciplinarity?”
Mr. Nayar also has an interesting take suggesting how NEP is leading to the neo-liberalisation of education and provides a valid argument for the seemingly over-optimistic claims of the government.
Choice means more risk and responsibility. One issue in the background of this “instrumental change” is public education. Public education has failed in India and suffers from a lack of teachers and adequate learning resources. With the “fixed” streams and lack of choice, government schools still suffer to provide adequate education. Education, in the past decade the past decade has also become increasingly privatised as coaching has become a norm for engineering and medical exams. Hence, the responsibility to provide competitive education is transferred from the government to the individual’s family to pay for coaching. This is a scary notion that will only become more apparent initially, when the courses are implemented for the current batches. Hopefully, digitalisation will be able to provide the needful provision of education. Still, it is unclear how well implementation will be carried out and whether most schools have the infrastructure to support it. As the promise of stability and security (government jobs) is replaced by autonomy and freedom of choice, getting ready for the job market seems uncertain, exciting and somewhat terrifying.
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amazing article dude! great structure and well researched imo