The State government should reject the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 as it did not address the educational needs of the State, according to L. Jawahar Nesan, former Vice-Chancellor of the Mysuru-based JSS Science and Technology University, a private varsity.
Mr. Nesan, who has been appointed a member of the NEET review panel by the State government, in a letter to Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, termed the recent views of former Anna University Vice-Chancellor E. Balagurusamy in support of the NEP as “tall claims” that “are baseless, superficial and naïve”. He felt that Prof. Balagurusamy’s recent letter to Mr. Stalin supporting the NEP was “without any scientific basis whatsoever.”
Mr. Nesan said that the NEP emphasised on Sanskrit as an option in the three language formula in school and beyond. With technology, students could learn the content in any language without having to learn the language. Until Tamil as a medium of learning was fostered at all levels of study, the current bilingual approach of Tamil and English should continue, he said.
There was no need for centralised assessment in Classes III, V and VIII as learning and assessment was limited to classrooms and the related activities include just two players — students and teachers. The governments should instead focus on investing on teachers’ competence and skills.
Human resource
Vocational education would not achieve its purpose as even engineering students had difficulty in finding internship, he said.
The NEP sought human capital while progressive worlds were gearing to equip human resource.
According to him, none of the education policies formulated in the country so far understood that the issue of jurisdiction of an education policy was limited to the notional-nation (society), which in Indian context was the State and that education should be treated exclusively an affair of the State.
Schemes such as special educational zones would ensure basic rights to access to education but not equal educational excellence for all.
