The recent announcement by the Karnataka government that the National Education Policy already implemented in the state by the previous government will be scrapped, caught the attention of everyone. This is specially so because education is connected with everyone in one way or another, as students (present or past), teachers (serving or retired), parents, educationalists, industrialists or business entities. For a student, it is their future that is spanning the next sixty or seventy years.
Educational field cannot remain aloof when the whole world is changing. Even though everything around us has changed so drastically with technology, we are in a situation here where we have to wait for more than thirty years to make a change in our educational policy. The new National Education Policy (NEP) has to be read in this background. No system including NEP can be expected to be 100 percent perfect especially in a country like India.
However, starting from 2015, extensive consultation processes have gone into developing the new NEP at various stages involving the experts and the public alike. Preparing an educational policy for a nation like India, with her vast population intermingled with diverse backgrounds in languages, culture, socio-economic factors and deep-rooted history is an arduous task that everyone knows.
With the technological advancements in communications and transportations, people in India and the world are well connected and extremely mobile. In this scenario a certain common playing field will naturally evolve and nobody can stop it. NEP is part of that evolution. In such a globalised mobile world certain benchmarking will become essential. Common entrance tests are all part of this benchmarking process. There must be common platforms for benchmarking and a certain standardised syllabus is also necessary. Common tests are not new.
We had common tests in the form of State board or University examinations, and this was even when mobility was limited. With interconnected India and the world, it is necessary to have pan-India benchmarking processes and states cannot operate in isolation. Wherever we had such pan-India entrance tests in the past, all had substantial improvements and emerged as institutions of international repute. IITs, TIFR, IISc, GIPMER, AIIMS, etc. are just a few examples.
NEP is now at various stages of implementations across India. Instead of strengthening the weak points of NEP, scraping it altogether with reasons like who or where it is done is not scientific and will not do any good for the future of our young generation. In this fast moving and connected world, if anyone tries to pull back, then Nature will express her law, “survival of the fittest”. Large migration of students to other states or countries is the result of the manifestation of this law.
For example, disproportionately large student migration from Kerala, compared to its small population size, recently caught the attention and the minister has to answer in the state assembly. After the Covid, when the students are slowly getting back to their study system, Kerala government introduced additional books for the students, that too after one third of the academic year is completed. One cannot close the eyes to these and similar facts and will ultimately affect the states negatively. Not just humans but birds and other animals also migrate when the existing environment threatens their survival.
There is a general tendency to over-populate the expert committees with political and literary figures of local languages. This will ultimately negate the very purpose of these committees. Even though they may have expertise in their own fields and are popular with the public, assuming they have expertise in all areas of such a vast field like education is disastrously damaging. Thus, choosing the right proven expertise in all the related areas is the most important task of forming an expert committee. There are also occasions where committees are formed after decisions are made which negates the very purpose of these committees. In this twenty-first century we can no longer afford to have a disastrous end result. Nobody owes us (anyone) a living.
— The author, Dr. V. Premachandran, is a member of the working group in the Kerala State Planning Board, and was a Senior Fellow at the Solar Energy Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
Read his previous articles here
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
First Published: Aug 25, 2023 8:50 AM IST
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