By Aanya Dandass
The new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, passed by the Union Cabinet appears on first blush, to be a goal oriented, progressive framework to reform the education system in India and bring it more at par with existing international systems. It makes provisions for reducing school syllabi to reduce pressure on the students, enhancing focus on “core essentials” and “experiential learning and critical thinking”, mandating that pre-school learning be formally required and replacing single stream courses with multidisciplinary ones at the college level. However, while the text exhibits great potential for growth, it’s manifestation all comes down to the implementation of the policy.
By virtue of education being a concurrent subject, it allows both the union and the state governments to regulate related policy. This makes the new NEP only a guideline for the regulation of India’s education system and therefore, desperately calls for an organised and collaborative effort from both levels. So far the centre has proposed the setting up of different committees with related ministry and state officials in order to begin a coordinated implementation strategy. As it is still early days for the NEP it is difficult to determine how implementation of the policy will be approached but based on the government’s record of regulation, there is definite concern about how the changes are to be instituted in the long term. It is possible that like its predecessors of 1968 and 1986, this policy too could fall flat because of political discord and resistance.
The NEP 2020 attempts to prevent these past failures by incorporating academicians into various decision making bodies. It proposes providing high education institutions with a higher degree of autonomy by scrapping bodies like the UGC and AICTE and handing over administrative reigns to the Board of Governance comprising academicians – to ensure minimal interference of politics in academia. This body change was first instituted for IIMs in 2017 but it is now to be applicable to all higher education institutes. This is just the first step in removing bureaucratic interference as several educational institutes at both levels are headed by bureaucrats. Weeding out all political control from the education system is a challenge that the NEP will have to persistently tackle in the long run in order to ensure smooth implementation of its ambitious but promising changes.