On the National Education Policy 2020

As I noted in my weekly Interesting Links post, India released its massive National Education Policy 2020 (this is a link to the 66 page pdf of the policy itself). There’s been lots of sub-par commentary around the Policy so far - you’re better off just skimming the Policy yourself. If you were to read one quick article about it, check out The Wire’s article.

Quality of the report

To put it mildly, it reads like the output of a hungover undergraduate student who forgot to start working on his paper in time and just spent two all-nighters pulling it together. It is awash with every buzzword you could possibly imagine (blockchain is so passé, try 7D Virtual Reality!). It has virtually no data to support virtually any of its recommendations (which have virtually no details). It does not reflect much careful research into past Indian education policies and reports, or much learning from any other country.

In contrast, just take a look at the TOC and List of Tables in the Kothari Commission report from 1964-1966.

Committee composition

For a document that on its face appears to promote technical and scientific research, the Committee is surprisingly non-technical (or unsurprisingly, depending on your expectations), with virtually no academicians or academic educators.

• The Chairman is a former ISRO Chairman. The ridiculously good mathematician, Manjul Bhargava, currently teaching at Princeton, is also on the Committee.
• Other than that, you have
  1. A former Vice Chancellor at SNDT Women’s University, with a Bachelors in Chemistry and a doctorate in Education, who has been the head of the Department of Educational Technology at SNDTWU,
  2. a former Vice Chancellor at Baba Saheb Ambedkar University of Social Sciences in MP, whose education and teaching qualifications I could not readily ascertain,
  3. a Vice Chancellor at the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in MP, who appears to have translated works between Hindi and Kannada for the most part but also English and Gujarathi,
  4. a former Chairperson of the High School & Intermediate Examination Board in UP, whose education and teaching qualifications I could not readily ascertain,
  5. the Dean for the Centre for Persian and Central Asian Studies at JNU in Delhi, who specializes in sufism and the medieval history of India, and
  6. a former member secretary of the Karnataka Knowledge Commission, who is a post graduate in Commerce with teaching experience at the Canara Bank School of Management Studies at Bangalore University.

Contrast this to earlier education commissions -

• The University Education Commission (1948-1949) aka the Radhakrishnan Commission consisted of:
  1. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the philosopher, the academician, the 1st Vice President and 2nd President of India,
  2. Dr. Tara Chand, the former Vice Chancellor at Allahabad University,
  3. Sir James Fitzjames Duff, the former Vice Chancellor at Durham University and member of several education commissions including the Asquith Commission on Higher Education in the Colonies, and the Elliot Commission on Higher Education in West Africa,
  4. Dr. Zakir Hussain, the economist, the co-founder and Vice Chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia, and the 3rd President of India,
  5. Dr. Arthur Ernest Morgan, the civil engineer, U.S. educator, nad former president of Antioch College,
  6. Dr. A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, the physician and longest serving Vice Chancellor of Madras University and the former chairman of the World Health Organization Executive Board,
  7. Dr. Meghnad Saha, the famous astrophysicist,
  8. Dr. Karm. Narayan Bahl, the zoologist at Lucknow University,
  9. Dr. John Tigert, the former U.S. Commissioner of Education and the former president of the University of Florida
  10. Shri Nirmal Kumar Sidhanta, the renowned Bengali scholar of English literature at the University of Lucknow and at the University of Calcutta.
• The Kothari Commission (1964-1966) - check out the Core Group of seventeen members which again is primarily comprised of academicians, educators with significant education policy experience (including international) and a few scientists. It also includes a panel of 20 Consultants from the top universities around the world.

Promotion of Indian languages, arts, and culture

There is a ton of focus on “imbibing the Indian ethos.” For example:

• “All curriculum and pedagogy, from the foundational stage onwards, will be redesigned to be strongly rooted in the Indian and local context and ethos in terms of culture, traditions, heritage, customs, language, philosophy, geography, ancient and contemporary knowledge, societal and scientific needs, indigenous and traditional ways of learning, etc….”
• “Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language…. This will be followed by both public and private schools. High-quality textbooks, including in science, will be made available in home languages/mother tongue.”
• Private higher education institutions will also be incentivized to use Indian languages as a medium of instruction.
• Degrees in Translation and Interpretation, etc. will be created. An Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation will be established.
• “Sanksrit will thus be offered at all levels of school and higher education as an important, enriching option for students.” Also offer other classical languages such as Pali, Persian, Prakrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia. Foreign languages such as Korean, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian will be offered.
• “‘Knowledge of India’ will include knowledge from ancient India and its contributions to modern India…. Knowledge Systems, including tribal knowledge and indigenous and traditional ways of learning, will be covered and included in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, yoga, architecture, medicine, agriculture, engineering, linguistics, sports, games, as well as in governance, polity, conservation.”
• An excellent team of teachers and faculty will have to be developed.
• The NRF will fund quality research in areas such as art, music, philosophy.
• Every higher education institution and every school complex will aim to have Artist(s)-in-Residence.

Teacher performance

There is very little focus on the area that most educators would include at the very top of their lists of educational reform: teacher hiring and retention should be tied to performance.

Indeed, Manjul Bhargava in an early 2019 interview about the Policy notes his top 3 concerns: a) teacher performance, b) early childhood education, and c) multidisciplinary education especially at the higher secondary and university levels.

Some of the Policy’s observations on this front include:

• “The high respect for teachers and the high status of the teaching profession must be restored so as to inspire the best to enter the teaching profession.”
• Scholarships to encourage students to enter B.Ed. programmes.
• Teacher Eligibility Tests will be strengthened to inculcate better test material, both in terms of content and pedagogy. The TETs will be extended to cover teachers across all stages - Foundational, Preparatory, Middle, and Secondary. A classroom demonstration or interview will become an integral part of teacher hiring at schools.
• Each teacher will be expected to participate in at least 50 hours of Continuous Professional Development opportunities every year.
• “A robust merit-based structure of tenure, promotion, and salary structure will be developed, with multiple levels within each teacher stage, that incentivizes and recognizes outstanding teachers.”
• “Teacher vacancies will be filled at the earliest, in a time-bound manner.” No deadline noted here.

Early Childhood Education and School Education

• New framework for early childhood care and education (up to age 8) will be developed. Essentially Pre-K, nursery, and kindergarten gets folded into the typical school system.
• Universal foundational literacy & numeracy in primary school by 2025 is the goal.
• Curriculum and pedagogy reform to move away from rote learning culture towards ‘real understanding’ and learning how to learn. Curriculum content will be reduced to core essentials, to allow for more critical thinking and discovery-based learning. More experiential learning.
• Technology: creation of National Educational Technology Forum (NETF) to provide a platform for ideas on using tech in education. Development of educational software.
• Currently, enrolment drops to 79.3% for grades 9-10 and 56.5% for grades 11-12. Concerted effort to achieve 100% enrolment in preschool to secondary level by 2030. Allow suitable opportunities for dropouts to re-enter the system.
• “The focus will be to have less emphasis on input and greater emphasis on output potential concerning desired learning outcomes.”
• Efforts to include community volunteers, senior citizens, retired scientists and govt employees, etc. for enhancing learning.
• No hard separation among arts/humanities/sciences streams in secondary school. Increased flexibility for students.
• “Mathematics and computational thinking will be given increased emphasis throughout the school years, starting with the foundational stage.”
• “Activities involving coding will be introduced in the Middle Stage.”
• During grades 6-8, every student will take a hands-on skill course such as carpentry, electric work, metal work, gardening, pottery making, etc.
• Too many small schools with very few students. By 2025, State and UT governments will address these challenges by adopting innovative mechanisms to group or rationalize schools. Strongly endorse the school complex/cluster idea where you have one secondary school together with all other schools offering lower grades in its neighbourhood radius of five to ten kilometres.
• For a periodic ‘health check-up’ of the overall system, a sample-based National Achievement Survey of student learning levels will be carried out by the proposed new National Assessment Centre, PARAKH.

Student assessment

• The aim of assessment to shift from one that primarily tests rote memorization skills to one that is more regular and formative, is more competency-based, promotes learning and development for our students, and tests higher-order skills. The progress card will be a holistic, 360-degree, multidimensional report.
• Grade 10 and 12 board exams will continue but will be redesigned to encourage holistic development. They will be made ‘easier’ such that they will test primarily core competencies rather than months of coaching and memorization. All students will be allowed to take Board exams on up to two occasions during any given school year.
• Additional examinations at the Grades 3, 5, and 8 level.
• A National Assessment Centre, PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) will be set up to develop standards and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation.

Support for gifted students / students with special talents

• Topic-based and project-based Clubs and Circles (e.g,. Math Circles, Debate Circles) will be encouraged and supported.
• Olympiads and competitions in various subjects will be conducted. All universities, including IITs and NITs, will be encouraged to use merit-based results from National and International Olympiads and other relevant national programmes as part of the criteria for admissions.

Higher education

• Envision a complete overhaul and re-energising of the higher education system. For example: more multidisciplinary undergraduate education; more faculty and institutional autonomy; revamping curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment; merit-based appointments and career progression based on teaching, research, and service, etc.
• Transform higher education institutions into large multidisciplinary universities, each of which will aim to have 3,000 or more students. All higher education institutions will plan to become multidisciplinary by 2030, and then gradually increase student strength to the desired levels by 2040.
  • By 2030, at least one large multidisciplinary higher education institution in or near each district.
  • Aim to increase Gross Enrolment Ratio from 26.3% (2018) to 50% by 2035.
• Establishment of a National Research Foundation to fund outstanding peer-reviewed research and to actively seed research in universities and colleges. Superficially, this appears to be modelled after something like the National Science Foundation in the US, however there is no indication that scientific research will be the majority focus of this new NRF.
• The traditional Indian notion of a ‘knowledge of many arts’ or what we currently call the ‘liberal arts’ must be brought back to Indian education.
• The structure and length of degree programs will be adjusted: either 3 or 4 year degrees, but with multiple exit / re-entry options. Will also include a 1 year certificate, a 2 year diploma, a 3 year Bachelors, but the 4 year Bachelors will be the preferred option.
• Flexible Masters programs: 2 year, with 2nd year devoted to research, after completing a 3 year Bachelors; 1 year Masters after a 4 year Bachelors; integrated 5 year Bachelors/Masters.
• MERUs (Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities) will be set up to be on par with IITs and IIMs.
• India will be promoted as a global study destination providing premium education at affordable costs. Greater internationalization - larger number of international students studying in India.
• High performing Indian universities will be encouraged to set up campuses in other countries.
• Selected top 100 world universities will be encouraged to operate in India.
• Greater exposure to vocational education throughout: by 2025, at least 50% of learners through the school & higher education system shall have exposure to vocational education.
• Healthcare education: all allopathic medical students must have a basic understanding of AYUSH.
• Key priority of the regulatory system will be to “stop the commercialization of higher education.”

Adult education

• An ‘outstanding’ adult education curriculum framework will be developed, to include at least five types of programmes: a) foundational literacy and numeracy, b) critical life skills (e.g., financial literacy, digital literacy, health care and awareness, etc.), c) vocational skills development, d) basic education, e) continuing education.

Financing

• Current public expenditure on education is around 4.43% of GDP (and only around 10% of total government spending) - much lower than the recommended 6% of GDP since the 1968 Policy & far smaller than most developed and developing countries.