The National Education Policy (NEP) has some innovative ideas for school education but their implementation will prove to be a challenge to the government, say experts.
Educationist R.V.G. Menon says the policy mentions phrases such as inclusiveness, equity, and creative and critical thinking, but the question is how these will be put into effect. The most crucial content is raising public spending on education to 6% of the GDP, as envisaged decades ago. Only if the Union and State governments are committed to it can many of the reforms be implemented in the area of public education.
Structural changes have been brought in, but there is no rationalisation for why class 1 and 2 have been clubbed with preschool to make the foundation stage or classes 9 to 12 clubbed into one block, he says.
There are practical issues to vocational education, especially in Kerala where parents are not keen on their wards choosing the vocational sector. Any change will require a huge social change and campaigning, besides recognition for those working in the vocational sector. Such aspects have not found mention in the policy, says Mr. Menon.
Amruth G. Kumar, head, School of Education, Central University of Kerala, says the introduction of the 5+3+3+4 school structure is the biggest change, especially universalisation of early childhood education.
Making schooling mandatory from the age of three will result in a great section of children losing their childhood. Till now, parents had a choice to send them to preschool or not. Though preschool has been made mandatory, no formal schooling will begin at this age.
Mr. Kumar points out that pre-primary or anganwadi teachers are not equipped to achieve outcomes envisioned by the policy. Developing a well-trained force will take at least a decade. There will be a question mark over implementing the idea of pre-primary education as a foundational stage during that period.
Highlighting some areas of concern, Mr. Kumar says the idea of setting up school complexes or clusters for effective use of resources and effective governance, while simple, will prove to be a big headache in the context of different school managements and sharing of teachers.
Semester system at all stages of schooling and allowing students the choice to select the subjects and take examinations will affect interdisciplinarity of courses, and run contrary to the idea of promoting interdisciplinarity at all levels of education. There will be the question of deciding what content will be taught – will the present syllabus be divided into semesters or offer various branches of a subject in each. This could result in too many choices for students but little knowledge, he warns.
The financial burden of education will be passed on to the common man under the policy. The welfare notion of education will be abandoned, and it will become an individual and private responsibility. This will have a long-lasting impact.
M. Shajerkhan, State unit secretary of the All India Save Education Committee, says that besides issues of centralisation and commercialisation, the new policy does not talk of education as a concept. It emphasises developing skills for the global market. Restructuring of courses was aimed only at that.
There is little talk of teaching in it; most of the focus is on learning. Without formal pedagogy till middle stage, the foundations of education will suffer. The play-based, activity-based model at that stage will affect the teaching-learning process. Focus on vocational skills in class 6 without ensuring strong foundation for academics will not do any good, he says.
