The National Education Policy, 2020 has been projected and applauded as the government of India’s resolve to expand and vitalise equitable ...
The National Education Policy, 2020 has been projected and applauded as the government of India’s resolve to expand and vitalise equitable quality public education. The document emphasises interventions in early childhood education; foundational literacy and numeracy; rearrangement of curricular and pedagogical structure of school education; reorganisation of teacher education; and a new institutional architecture for higher education.
On close scrutiny, the policy does little to address specific, well-known and endemic problems that plague India’s education system. Most of the proposed interventions appear well meaning. But because they are based on shallow understanding of the ground realities of education in an unequal society, they could suffer deep infirmities in execution. Several innovations proposed by NEP 2020 could exacerbate existing educational challenges and perpetuate inequality.
Universalising school education via privatisation?
The Right to Education Act, 2009, established the “duty of the state’’ to provide elementary education for all children of India. As a result, the number of out-of-school children (aged 6-14) fell from 13 million in 2006 to six million in 2014, according to UNICEF. The NEP 2020 was expected to extend the Right to Education to include children from preschool years to the age of 18, as was stated in the 2019 draft NEP.
NEP 2020, however, is silent...
