Draft National Educational Policy: Blueprint for a new India

The draft National Educational Policy (NEP) released earlier this month for consultation is a very badly drafted document to be considered a policy but buried within it are some revolutionary ideas whi-ch if implemented will fundamentally change our educational systems. This note is attemept to highlight some from it.

Early childhood care and education
The policy document identifies, correctly, that there is shortage of quality early childhood care (3-6 years) in the country. Currently there is no consistency in this matter. The policy recommends creation of better facilities, curricula and study materials for this group. The policy also recommends moving the early childhood care to the existing primary schools under a 5+3+3+4 year educational formula (five years of early childhood care and education which include three years of earlychildhood care and then Grade 1 and Grade 2). I don’t think it is a good idea to move early childhood care and education into a school environment. The early childhood education should be fundamentally play-based giving children a childhood, and, at the same time, giving them opportunities to socialise, etc. If they are put into the physical constraints of a school system with excessive stress on structure and discipline, their childhood will be lost. The policy does not elaborate much on the training of the teachers who will be handling children during this period. The current proposal is to offer a six-month training to Anganwadi workers. If professionalising early childhood care is an objective, then a lot of attention needs to be given to those who will be the first teachers of our kids.

School Education
As mentioned, the NEP proposes a 5+3+3+4 year scheme instead of the present 10 + 2 years system. This 5 include three years of pre-school early childhood care (which the policy recommends move into the school premises) and hence the 5+3+3+4 system.

• 5 years of Foundational Stage:  years of pre-primary schools (3 years) and Grade 1, 2
• 3 years of the preparatory (or latter primary) Stage: Grade 3,4 and 5
• 3 years of middle  (or upper primary) stage: Grade 6,7 and 8
• 4 years of the high (or secondary) Stage: Grade 9,10,11 and 12

This system aligns well with modern schooling systems around the world. One of the important element is that children will be entering formal school education only at age of 6 instead of age 5 as in the currentsystem. World over there is a tendency to move the beginning of formal education to a later stage. Finland, whose school education system is considered the best in the world, starts schooling at 7 years. After three years of early childhood education, they have a one year pre-school where trained graduates prepare the students to enter into the school system. While moving schooling to year 7 may be seen as too revolutionary in our context, we can adapt their experiences into the three months “school preparation module” which the policy recommends for Grade 1.

Languages
One area which the new educational policy puts very high emphasis is on the language education and this goes all the way from primary to Ph. D. The policy proposes children to start learning three languages right from the first standard.

The reason given for this early start is that children are able to grasp new languages better at the younger age and those who learn multiple languages develop their brain functions better. While it is true those children who are exposed to multiple languages at early age (e.g., children with two parents having different languages, children living in other countries other than their native country where a different language is spoken) easily pick them up at the same time, I am not entirely sure if the three-language formula will be a great success in India for the following reasons: There are not enough teachers trained to teach English, and other languages, to Grade 1 students across India. One estimate available for 2014 is that there are 1.3 million schools. If we assume one-third of them are primary schools, we are still talking about more than 4 lakh schools. We would need 4 lakh new English teachers available in India before the policy can be rolled out.

There is the question of the third language. The policy prescribes that it could be any other language, say Sanskrit, Tamili, Malayalam, Bengali, etc. This is very welcome. But firstly it will be almost impossible for a typical village school to have access to multiple language teachers and so will need to opt for one or two additional language per school. Even then tens of thousands of Malayalam and Bengali teachers will need to move across to different states to fill the requirement of this prescription.

It is clear to me that those who drafted policy got carried away with the idealistic dream of teaching multiple languages at early childhood as per the latest scientific revelations. In a pattern which is seen consistently through this policy document, they did not think through how it will be implemented across India. Please note that I am entirely in agreement with the idea that children be taught multiple languages including a foreign language. But such policies should be backed up by a strategy to deploy the much-needed resources.

High (secondary) stage education
Some of the most significant policy changes in school education has been packed into the high (or secondary) school stage. Unlike the current +2 system, the last four years of schooling from Grade 9 is to be brought together into a single unit. The following are some of the major changes proposed:
Secondary education to be completed in semesters rather than years.

As a result, there will be 8 semesters during the 4 years of secondary education
There will be no separation between science, arts or commerce streams. Students will be allowed to mix and match between the subjects they choose.
There will be an induction of vocational education at this level with every student being expected to acquire some vocational skills, and there will be no separation between normal schools and vocational schools. There will be no separation between curricular, co-curricular or extracurricular activities; all elements of schooling will be considered curricular.

The policy identifies curricular integration of essential subjects and skills such as scientific temper, sense of aesthetics and art, communication, ethical reasoning, digital literacy, knowledge of India and knowledge of critical issues facing local communities, states of the country and the world; It is not clear from the policy as to at whether these courses will be taught at secondary stage or earlier. There will be no single board exams, but instead examinations will be conducted regularly during the 8 semesters. Students will be expected to take about 5 courses per semester but will only have to choose 24 courses for the board examination, an average of 3 per semester.

However, each student over the duration of the secondary school would be required to take at least two semester board examination in mathematics, two in science, one each in Indian history, knowledge of contemporary India, ethics and philosophy, economics, business and commerce, digital literacy/computational thinking, art and physical education and two vocational subjects, says the policy. In addition, “each student would be required to take three basic language board examinations that assess the basic proficiency in the three-language formula and at least one additional board examination in a language of India at literature level. This is a fundamental and major shift from the existing system. While this curricula makes  everybody into a “generalist” in terms of preparing them for higher studies, especially abroad, this may seriously disadvantage them.

The authors of the policy may wish to elaborate on how exactly they expect science or mathematics to be taught across the four years. Will a student writing math exam at semester 8 (Grade 12) be studying the same math the student studies at semester 1 (Grade 9) and, if not, how will the mathematics board exam grade be different? Will a student who studied one semester of biology in Grade 9 be allowed to write entrance exam for medicine? On the whole, it appears to me that the curriculum, semester system and examination arrangements are not thought through completely or at least not explained clearly in the policy document.

Entrance Exams
The policy document clearly identifies the problems created by the culture of “entrance exams” in the country and the stress they are putting on children. It proposes a new National Testing Agency (NTA) which will “offer high quality common modular entrance examinations multiple times each year in various subjects from logic, quantitative reasoning and languages to more specialised subject examinations in the science, arts and vocational subjects, so that most universities may use these common entrance examinations rather than having hundreds of universities devising their own examinations.”. It appears that the NTA idea is moulded after the scholastic aptitude test approach in the United States which has stood the test of time. I think it is an excellent idea and should be implemented as soon as possible to liberate our children from of the many stressful entrance examinations existent today. Moving from university entrance to NTA modular tests, however, will not solve the issue of the mushrooming of the entrance coaching industry because they will just transform to become NTA exam coaching centers.

(The writer works with United Nations Environment Programme)
(To be continued)