Opinion: Draft education policy, a giant leap towards excellence

Vishalini from Thirunelveli, southernmost part of Tamil Nadu was only 13 years old when she got direct admission to B Tech course, which she completed in three years. She has an astonishing IQ of 225 and is now working as an independent research scientist in Artificial Intelligence .

Tataghat Avtar Tulsi from Patna Bihar obtained bachelor’s degree at the age of 10 and went on to become the youngest IIT professor later in life. Satyam, son of Siddhartha Singh, a farmer from Ara, Bihar, was the youngest to crack IIT JEE in 2013. Whereas, 13-year- old Lydian Nadaswaram from Chennai is the youngest pianist in the world to have won international award for the best pianist.

These youngsters were fortunate that their talent was identified and nurtured at the right time. There are thousands of such youth in remote corners of India who have the urge to excel but for want of right opportunity wither away. Present system of education hardly nurtures talent with over emphasis on scores in exams, and not on understanding concepts.

If there is any problem in the society, we immediately blame the education system be it women safety, child abuse, violence in scholastic campuses and so on. Immediately after Independence in 1948, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan committee was constituted for educational reforms which spelt out the aims of education, namely, to teach that life has a meaning, to awaken the innate ability to live the life of soul by developing wisdom, to train for democracy, and to train for self-development. These laudable principles are relevant even today. The then vice chancellor of Madras University Lakshmana Swamy Mudaliar was one of the members of the first commission.

 Since then, several commissions at periodic intervals went into improving the education system to prepare the youth to face challenges. Now the government of India has come out with a draft education policy  which has triggered a nationwide debate and rightly so.

The new education policy aims to  focus on the five pillars of education — access, equity, quality, accountability, and affordability. United Nations in the revised sustainable development goals for 2030 has prioritised education, stressed its universality that it is the responsibility of the member states to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030.

Four basic principles of education, as enunciated by the International Commission on education submitted to UNESCO in 1996, is learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. They have been dovetailed in the present education policy which has filled the gap unfinished by the National policy on education 1986/1992.The present draft of NPE has suggested structural changes at all level schools, higher education and research.

It attempts to put an end to rote system of learning which the present system revels in but more inclusive encompassing arts and science. Curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular will be integrated with wider scope for students to learn variety of skills including exposure to vocational training. The policy proposes to structure school education into four phases. The first phase is age three to eight years — Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in consonance with Article 21A of the constitution ensuring compulsory primary education for all.

Next will be preparatory phase of five years in Class 3, 4, 5, where children will be exposed to classroom learning with text books followed by three years in Class 6, 7, 8. The last phase of four years in Class 9, 10, 11 and 12 will be multi-disciplinary studies preparing the students for under graduate programme. The policy also proposes to extend the right to compulsory education up to Class 12. Higher education will have liberal arts approach that integrates humanities and arts with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) which has proven positive learning outcomes with emphasis on critical thinking, problem solving, team work and communication skills.

Dr Abdul Kalam had time and again spoken on improving standards of research and innovation. This has found pride of place in the proposed restructuring of higher education with first type focusing on world class research and high quality teaching, second type will lay emphasis on high quality post graduate teaching across disciplines with special focus on research and, third type will cover high quality teaching for under graduate education.Thus country’s 800 universities with over 40,000 colleges will be integrated to ten to fifteen thousand institutes of excellence. With this avowed objective of universal access and retention in school of all Indians in ten age group of 3 to 18 by 2030, the policy proposes to make teachers centre of education system. The teacher education system will be professionalised with rigorous four year integrated subject specific teaching programme.

India is moving towards a 5-trillion dollar economy and consequently there should be substantial investment on education with public and private initiatives treated equally . Given the natural skill of children to grasp languages, the policy envisages exposure of children  to different languages in early stages, including classical languages like Tamil at middle school level.

They will also have option to choose foreign languages like French, German and, Spanish etc. This proposal of language studies has evoked lot of debate with many expressing concern that this should not result in imposition of Hindi. This of course is misplaced as policy stresses that mother tongue should be the medium of instruction with choice to the students to learn other languages. We in India are exposed to different languages and it is this flair for languages which stimulates multi-tasking ability so essential in this technology driven world and the reason why Indians excel in Silicon Valley. 

But language chauvinists and politicians of different hues exploit this as an emotional issue for their own selfish ends. On the issue of language Tamil Nadu has the dubious distinction of having blocked Navodaya schools, an excellent central government scheme to provide free quality education to children in rural and backward areas. It is another matter that the very same politicians send their children to schools offering CBSE stream with Hindi as chosen language - height of hypocrisy! 

Swami Vivekananda said “Education is not the amount of information that we put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making character making assimilation of ideas.”This NPE running to 484 pages, formulated under the stewardship of Dr Kasturi Rangan with nine member  committee of eminent Educationalist , is one of the longest documents on educational reforms having drawn strength from the earlier TS Subramaniyam committee formed in 2015,plodded on for two long years interacting  across length and breadth of India with everyone who had ideas to contribute .

We are in the threshold of fourth industrial revolution after the first mechanical engineering based industrial revolution followed by scientific innovation energy fuelled industries and the third knowledge based internetrevolution.

Now experts foresee an exponential change in the way technology will change the life styles globally.  National educational policy will definitely prepare the youth to face the paradigm shift of the fourth industrial revolution in the next decade to give them robust scholastic inputs, at the same time ensuring that they remain grounded on core principles of education embracing the diverse culture, language and ethnicity of this great Nation.