By Jibran Khan*

The Union cabinet approved the NEP on 29th July 2020. The policy is India’s first update since the last education policy was introduced in 1986. NEP promises ambitious changes, however, with a year of education affected by COVID-19 and questions about the implementation efficiency of the policy, it is critical to review the performance over the last year. 

Online Education & Hurdles to Access

The global health exigency last year prompted the closure of schools around India. Educational institutions shifted to online teaching. Even though online teaching has its advantages, it comes with a few issues. Comprehensive online education needs a stable and accessible internet infrastructure coupled with equipment to ensure a glitch-free classroom experience. This move affected the vulnerable populations in cities and most rural Indian populations because of the non-existent infrastructure and lack of access because of the monetary investment required. There has been a deprioritisation of education in rural households, as the advantages that motivated parents to send their children out to schools such as mid-day meals do not exist in the online formats. The impact of this has especially hurt the vulnerable populations. This is critical, as education and literacy have been proportional to economic access. This means that the gap between classes in India might widen if it is not specifically addressed when the NEP is implemented in different states. The states implementing the NEP should ideally conduct research studies to get clarity on the gap that has been created over the last year, and once they have a clear picture, the problem will be better tackled.  

The NEP, however, has a lot of mechanisms that can be used to bridge the gap and help restructure the educational system and incentivize education in the rural and urban poor households. Including regional languages in the curriculum as a mode of conduct for the initial years of a child’s education ensures that their comfort and eagerness to learn might improve as they would not find themselves in a foreign environment, this is especially true for households where English would not have been the primary medium at home. This comfort is especially important to bring back children in the fold of the education system. The medium of education coupled with the new holistic model of education where the focus on marks as a metric of success will be significantly reduced might ensure more comprehensive methods of evaluation. The plans to create Bal Bhavan in every state and the establishment of the National Curricular & Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education will be critical in shaping these steps towards inclusivity. However, the policy will have to strike a balance between the regional languages and English due to the global demand for the language and ease of communication and access to resources such as the internet it provides currently. This also aligns with the policy’s vision to shift pedagogy through technology backed methods.

The policy recognizes the class and gender divides that dictate access and quality of education for populations. This recognition will go a long way in being able to sensitize future policymakers, and especially ensuring that the implementation will focus on ensuring that certain populations do not lose out in the transition. It is, however, important that the governments, when implementing the NEP, expand the purview of what is recognized as inclusivity. Many vulnerable populations, such as people identifying as Transgender are not recognized by the NEP explicitly. This is critical as certain populations have low turnout numbers because of various reasons, such as discrimination in jobs, housing and other areas of access. A truly inclusive vision needs to ensure that this populous also get representation and safe spaces are created for their inclusion in the education system. 

Implementation 

As impressive as these plans look on paper, the implementation would be critical to bridging the gap in the educational structure. Currently, a government school in India face issues regarding the lack of human resource. Often schools have a single teacher who is not trained to teach the different classes in which the student’s study or the different subjects that they have. This often leads to students not getting quality educational instruction. The issue that this has created over the years has been a gap between highly competitive private schools and the government school ecosystem. Similarly, to ensure that the medium of instruction is the regional language, there need to be active steps taken towards the employment and training of instructors who could make this policy fruitful. The establishment of Bal Bhavan and the Framework committee would need substantial investments to ensure successful implementation. It is critical to view the NEP concerning other policy decisions that the government is taking. In 2021, the budget for education has been reduced by 6000 crores, a 6 per cent reduction from last year. The biggest cut has been implemented in schools. Given this, it would be critical to view how the policy progresses with a reduced budget. However, since the vaccination drive for persons below 18 years is starting from September, it would be easier to get students back to classrooms and would help ease a lot of issues that online education posed. 

Higher Education & Proposed Changes

The NEP last year recognized the major issues that plague the Higher Education ecosystem in India. Over the last year, these issues have been exacerbated. Straightjacket curriculums that are often outdated end up making recruitment processes tougher. Moreover, the last year showed the lack of ground research infrastructure and funding that institutions suffer from. The NEP’s goals over increasing the research funding and infrastructure and making sure that Multidisciplinary universities are established can go a long way in ensuring that competitive syllabuses are created, which ensures that students have the freedom to choose and navigate through their passions. 

The last year also highlighted the issues with relation to the exorbitant costs of education in prestigious universities around the world. A lot of students from the developing world, without adequate access to vaccination processes, were barred from travelling internationally to their universities but were still expected to pay the full fee for their courses. This ensured limited access and increased dropouts and deference. The NEP’s policy to create foreign campuses in India in collaboration with foreign universities to give world-class education at comparatively reduced costs might be critical in ensuring that meritorious students who want to study in international institutions of repute can do so without bearing significant costs. Implementing this program would, however, be a challenge. The Yale-NUS campus in Singapore one of the most reputed foreign collaborations closed recently because of inadequate funding. The implementation committees must ensure that there are sustainable models of ensuring longevity and regular funding to run these institutions.

Policy decisions such as making colleges disability friendly, options to create open distance learning, making undergraduate education a 4-year degree compared to the 3-year degree which is often not recognized by foreign institutions and establishment of MERUs (Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities) and Choice-based credit systems are all steps which will help campuses be more inclusive and choice oriented compared to the rigid models at hand right now. However, the success of a lot of these programs and systems can only be evaluated post-implementation and how it is received by the students and teachers alike. However, some changes, such as ensuring disability-friendly campuses, are a positive step towards inclusion and can go a long way in assisting students who face barriers in the current system. 

Infrastructure Development & Implementation 

The policy sets out guidelines to be followed by institutions on the fronts of counselling, scholarships, faculty development and inclusion. The policy, however, does not have a clear structure in which these guidelines will be implemented. For example, the policy states that there will be efforts to increase scholarships and private institutions will be encouraged. There is thus slight vagueness regarding the distribution plan or a framework regarding scholarships. The policy additionally talks about capable and trained teachers and counsellors to assist with the emotional development of students. Both are currently pressing issues in the educational system, a lack of professionally trained teachers in higher education and campuses often having no safety or emotional wellness centres. Given, both these policies take time to develop however, there needs to be clarity on the upheaval of the current culture and sensitization created regarding emotional wellness and advanced pedagogy. 

Conclusion 

The NEP was conceptualised before the pandemic. However, it’s provisions hold in them keys to solve issues that the country’s education system face today. This speaks volumes about the vision and quality of the document. For the implementation to be optimised the agencies and governments will need to use evidence based research to gauge out the gaps in receptivity and access that have become exacerbated over the last year. There needs to be clear guidelines about how the recruitment and training of teachers will be done to ensure that the vision of a more holistic pedagogy is realised. The government over time will have to contribute more towards the educational funding to realise the vision.

*Jibran Khan is a fifth year law student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow.