Over the past couple of years, India has made substantial progress on the access to education front. Government initiatives like the mid-day meal scheme, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao Yojana, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan have increased enrollment rates to more than 99% for primary education. However, the quality of India’s education system has been widely criticized for its lacklustre approach towards skill development and enhancement of critical thinking. The focus has now shifted to ensuring that Indian students are imparted with the relevant skills that will allow them to be contributing members of the workforce, thereby serving as essential cogs in the wheel of development. India’s demographic dividend presents a lucrative opportunity however this latent human capital can only prove advantageous if proper infrastructure is provided and skill gaps are bridged.
A step forward in this direction is the new draft of the National Education Policy 2019. The draft brings with it a promise of a brighter future for Indian education with bold reforms and significant restructuring. The Chair of the Committee responsible for drafting the NEP and former Chairman of ISRO, K Kasturirangan describes his vision for Indian education as “encompassing the holistic development of students with special emphasis on the development of the creative potential of each individual, in all its richness and complexity.” Early Childhood Care and Education.
The policy starts with an intent to establish a strong foundational base in the primary years through what it terms as “Early Childhood Care and Education” or ECCE. This draws on the well-established and scientifically proven assertion that children who start out behind tend to stay behind. Due to greater access to resources, opportunities, nutrition and a strong learning environment at home, children born to affluent families tend to have a considerably large head start over those born to disadvantaged families. This creates a vicious cycle whereby inequality leads to greater inequality and this trend continues for generations to come. According to the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2017 conducted by NCERT, 33% of students in Grade 3 cannot read smaller texts with comprehension and 44% of students in Grade 3 cannot use basic math to solve daily problems. This learning gap only widens in higher grades. Thus, improving foundational learning is essential for improved academic performance and lower drop out rates in the future. According to the policy, quality ECCE entails access to health and nutrition of both the mother and child prior to the age of 3 as well as cognitive, kinetic and emotional stimulation for the kid. From the ages of 3-6, it includes play-based education to develop comfort around one’s peers, self-help skills such as getting ready on one’s own and moral development or a basic understanding of the difference between right and wrong. Overall ECCE focuses less on rigid curriculum-based rote learning and more on the development of values such as compassion, playfulness, curiosity and respectful communication.
The implementation of ECCE resolves around the system of Anganwadis. These rural child care centres have come a long way in providing nutrition and healthcare to mothers and their infants however there is a need to include a robust educational dimension in these centres. On the other hand, most private pre-primary schools lack what Anganwadis make up for in terms of healthcare. The policy thus calls for the expansion of the Anganwadi system to include a strong educational component. As per the committee’s guidelines, a four-pronged approach will be followed to deliver the newly formed Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Education which includes growth targets and guidelines for both parents and children. Depending on the needs of the locality as well as the infrastructure available one of the following four approaches will be adopted – Expanding Anganwadis to include a strong educational component, developing Anganwadis in the vicinity of primary schools, co-locating pre-schools with primary schools or building stand-alone pre-schools. Since the aim of the ECCA program is to serve as an equalizer, greater attention and priority will be accorded to the socio-economically disadvantaged. These efforts will be supplemented by educator training programs, greater funding allocations and installation of learning-friendly environments. Another long-awaited step that has been suggested is to include free and compulsory pre-primary education for children of the ages 3-6 under the ambit of the Right to Education Act.
ECCE aims to tackle the holes in India’s education system at the grassroots level. Improving the quality of education at the primary and pre-primary level is also a more cost-effective solution to the problem as it is easier to fix learning gaps during the early years. In fact, UNESCO projects a fiscal cost of 10% of the total expenditure on primary education if the problem persists. Several other countries such as Vietnam, South Africa and Kenya have been prioritizing the improvement of foundational learning through extensive teacher training. ECCE marks an essential shift in focus from one set of all-important exams conducted in the last year of schooling to steady and sustained learning for a longer time. Efforts under ECCE will also help achieve the policy’s second objective – foundational literacy and numeracy for every student in Grade 5 and beyond. These efforts will be supplemented by an expansion of the mid-day meal programme, provision of workbooks on language and mathematics, increasing focus on foundational literacy and numeracy in schools, ensuring proper teacher development, regular adaptive assessment, encouraging large scale community and volunteer involvement etc. Moreover there are plans to develop a national repository of language and mathematics resources which will be used in the National Tutors Programme, a peer to peer learning initiative as well as the Remedial Instructional Aides Programme, an initiative to help students who have fallen behind catch up with the assistance of instructional aides. These efforts along with the extension of the RTE Act to cover secondary education will help decrease India’s problematic dropout rate. A Structural Change in Curriculum and Pedagogy
Another major task taken up by the policy includes restructuring 10+2 framework into a 5+3+3+4 design corresponding to the ages ranges of 3-8, 8-11, 11-14 and 14-18. A recommendation welcomed by several educators, the new structure will include 5 years of the foundational stage which incorporated ECCE, 3 years of the primary stage the focus of which will be on laying the general groundwork across subjects as well as imparting foundational literacy and numeracy, 3 years of the middle stage in the course of which specific subject teachers will be introduced and finally 4 years of the secondary stage which will include multidisciplinary study with greater depth, critical thinking and flexibility. The policy exerts great emphasis on the importance of imparting Indian and local traditions through education as well as the benefits of teaching in the home language or mother tongue at least in the early stages. The document asserts that the cognitive benefits of multilingualism aside children grasp concepts more quickly when taught in the language they speak at home. Ironically it was over the matter of language that the NEP found itself in a bind when it was first released. The controversy stemmed from the discontent of southern states regarding BJP’s alleged attempt to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states through the NEP.
While the BJP and its allies have a notorious reputation of attempting to saffronise Indian education, the debate on the NEP was largely ill-informed. Nowhere in its 400+ pages does the NEP refer to Hindi as India’s “national language”. In fact, it provided a repetition of the three-language formula that had already been in place while also promoting instruction in the home or regional language at the primary stages. However, following the protests a revised draft of the National Education Policy was released which dropped Hindi as a requirement and encouraged Hindi speaking states to offer and teach other modern Indian languages to promote national integration.
In addition to the obvious cognitive benefits of multilingualism, these efforts aim to bridge the gap between the elite and the disadvantaged by slowly but surely chipping away at the notion of English as a pre-requisite for high paying jobs or even to be considered educated. Although English will be taught for functionality as evidently English has become an international common language in certain realms such as science and technology research, the depth of literature, art and culture should be explored through Indian languages. It appears the proposed changes and additions in the curriculum aim to eradicate the common cry of all students regarding not being taught anything that they will end up using in the “real world”. Although this reiteration is a tad unfair considering even traditional subjects build critical thinking abilities and directly or indirectly have some real-world application, it is safe to say that Indian education lacks essential courses on life skills, digital literacy, vocational exposure, evidence-based learning, current affairs and ethical and moral reasoning. Students with sufficient resources and time to take extra classes may end up bridging these gaps of their own accord however this only widens the achievement gaps that we talked about earlier. Extra material & information on the internet is more often than not available only in English and there is a great lack of quality translations. Hence the draft policy, rightly so, attempts to integrate these courses in the formal education system thereby equipping schools with the right tools to provide a holistic education.
A suggestion that will come as a sigh of relief to those that dread the all-important Board Exams will aim to eliminate their “high stakes” aspect. As per the document: “Students will be expected to take a total of at least 24 subject Board Examinations, or on average three a semester and these examinations would be in lieu of in-school final examinations so as not to be an additional burden on students or teachers.” Some of these include compulsory examinations subjects such as mathematics, science, Indian history, economics, ethics and philosophy etc. while a total of 15 or more subjects will be chosen by the student himself and will be tested locally by the school. There will be minimal segregation of science and arts streams with greater flexibility in choosing different combinations of subjects. Moreover, it aims to change the “one size fits all” approach to education by supporting children who have singular talents.
