NEP 2016

National Education Policy 2016

Policy Consultation on Higher Education - adequately reflect the current concerns regarding education including higher education, the unfulfilled goals of the 1986 Policy and the reasons for formulating a new Policy.

The goals of education – to acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes and values keeping in mind the issues of Access, Equity and Quality have been spelt out.

In general anything that needs to be said or considered while formulating the Policy finds mention at least somewhere in the documents circulated.  The following comments / suggestions are made for consideration of the Policy Formulating Committee:

While access and equity are pivotal issues considering our socio-economic and have rightly been highlighted separately, if we have to survive, leave aside compete, in the globalising economy Excellence needs unequivocal emphasis (much more than indicated in the documents circulated).  Similarly, affordability of quality education requires serious attention.

21^st Century will increasingly become a knowledge based society (and economy) with rapid advances to completive knowledge generation and utilization.  We cannot live on borrowed knowledge.

Our survival as a respectable nation will not just require knowledge acquisition, but even more so knowledge generation in internationally competitive basis.

For this to happen the standard of education at all levels – needs radical changes and mechanisms to implement these.

Rote learning, an unfortunate cultural heritage, needs to be replaced by enquiry based learning using modern learning tools.

This would require an altogether different type of teachers and appropriate learning facilities and environment beginning at the school level.

There is no doubt – need to enhance the number of educational institutions at all levels, to meet the growing demands, we do not need more of the same but more of a different kind.

There are already examples of such institutions at all levels in the country – Kendriya Vidyalayas, some private schools and colleges, IISc, IITs, IIMS, AIIMS, but an empowered group could scout around the world for this purpose,

Similarly a careful study is necessary to find reasons why no Indian University is ranked among the top 100.

A National Policy should, no doubt, benefit the largest numbers to the maximum and hence concerns about equity and inclusiveness are but natural, as is obvious from the draft document. However, there has to be a scope for the highly talented, relatively much fewer, to achieve their full potentials, serve as a role model and be internationally competitive.

Mention has been made repeatedly to safeguard the interest of those left behind for historical reasons, yet there is a growing middle-income group which is finding it difficult to find the desired opportunities for progress. The rich can go to private costly institutions or go abroad, those historically left behind can benefit from reservations, a large number of bright students from middle-income group find most doors closed. A policy for future should find some solution for this group already in fairly large numbers.

A study is necessary to ascertain why thousands of our bright students go abroad for higher education – not only for the advanced countries of the West bust the China, Russia, Singapore etc.,

Mention has been made of growing commercialization of education, but the policy to rectify this is not obvious.

Merit based transparent selection process of teachers find mention but being aware of current scenario, it requires a determined political will and unimpeachable administrative machinery. Easy said than done!

Promoting research environment in our Universities and professional Institutions an absolute necessary for creating an internationally competitive society requires a cultural change never an easy task. Hence a well thought of policy and action plan is required. Mere mention of it in a Policy document is unlikely to succeed.

For any ambitious policy like the New Education Policy to succeed would require financial commitment of a high order. The earlier Natural Policies of 1968 and 1986/92 had recommended 6% of the GDP as the norm for the national outlay on education. However for from enhancing it to meet the newer challenges it has hovered around 3.5% currently.

Last but not the least a Policy is as good as its Implementation Strategy – No doubt the latter is not an intrinsic component of a Policy Statement, nevertheless it must be well thought-out prior to announcing the Policy.