Draft National Education Policy

School Education

• Early Childhood Care and Education: 
  • Problems:
    • Curriculum that doesn’t meet the developmental needs of children.
    • Lack of qualified and trained teachers.
    • Substandard pedagogy.
  • Current Status:
    • Most early childhood education is delivered through Anganwadi and private-preschools. 
    • Less focus on the educational aspects of early childhood. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Two-part curriculum for early childhood care and education.
      • Guidelines for up to three-year-old children (for parents and teachers),
      • Educational framework for three to eight-year-old children. 
    • This would be implemented by
      • improving and expanding the Anganwadi system.
      • co-locating Anganwadi with primary schools. 
• The Right to Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act): 
  • Current Status:
    • It provides free and compulsory education to all children from the age of six to 14 years. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Extending the ambit of the RTE Act to include early childhood education and secondary school education. 
    • This would extend the coverage of the Act to all children between the ages of three to 18 years. 
    • No detention of children till class eight. 
    • Schools must ensure that children are achieving age-appropriate learning levels. 
• Curriculum framework: 
  • Problems
    • Rote learning of facts and procedures.
  • Policy Measure
    • Re-structuring School education. This would consist of a 5-3-3-4 design comprising:
      • five years of foundational stage (three years of pre-primary school and classes one and two)
      • three years of preparatory stage (classes three to five)
      • three years of middle stage (classes six to eight)
      • four years of secondary stage (classes nine to 12)
    • Curriculum load in each subject should be reduced to its essential core content. 
• School exams: 
  • Problems:
    • Force students to concentrate only on a few subjects
    • Do not test learning in a formative manner
    • Cause stress among students. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • State Census Examinations in classes three, five and eight. 
    • Restructuring the board examinations to test only core concepts, skills and higher order capacities.  
    • These board examinations will be on a range of subjects.  
    • The students can choose their subjects, and the semester when they want to take these board exams. 
    • The in-school final examinations may be replaced by these board examinations. 
• School infrastructure: 
  • Problems:
    • Small size schools – operationally complex to deploy teachers and critical physical resources.
  • Policy Measures:
    • Multiple public schools should be brought together to form a school complex. 
    • A complex will consist of one secondary school (classes nine to twelve) and all the public schools in its neighbourhood that offer education from pre-primary till class eight.  
    • The school complexes will also include anganwadis, vocational education facilities, and an adult education centre.
    • Each school complex will be a semi-autonomous unit providing integrated education across all stages from early childhood to secondary education. 
    • This will ensure that resources such as infrastructure and trained teachers can be efficiently shared across a school complex. 
• Teacher management and training: 
  • Problems:
    • Steep rise in teacher shortage
    • Lack of professionally qualified teachers
    • Deployment of teachers for non-educational purposes. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Teachers should be deployed with a particular school complex for at least five to seven years. 
    • Teachers will not be allowed to participate in any non-teaching activities (such as cooking mid-day meals or participating in vaccination campaigns) during school hours that could affect their teaching capacities.
    • For teacher training, the existing B.Ed. programme will be replaced by a four-year integrated B.Ed. programme that combines high-quality content, pedagogy, and practical training.
    • An integrated continuous professional development will also be developed for all subjects. 
    • Teachers will be required to complete a minimum of 50 hours of continuous professional development training every year. 
• Regulation of schools: 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Separating the regulation of schools from aspects such as policymaking, school operations, and academic development. 
    • Creating an independent State School Regulatory Authority for each state that will prescribe basic uniform standards for public and private schools.  
    • The Department of Education of the State will formulate policy and conduct monitoring and supervision.

Higher Education

• According to the All India Survey on Higher Education, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education in India has increased from 20.8% in 2011-12 to 25.8% in 2017-18.

GER comparison across countries (2014)

	Primary (Class 1-5)	Upper Primary (Class 6-8)	Upper Secondary (Class 9-12)	Higher Education
India	101.4	89.3	62.5	23
China	103.9	100.4	88.8	39.4
USA	99.5	101.9	93.2	86.7
Germany	103.3	101.6	104.6	65.5

• The Committee identified lack of access as a major reason behind low intake of higher education in the country. It aims to increase GER to 50% by 2035 from the current level of about 25.8%. 

Key recommendations in this regard include:

• Regulatory structure and accreditation: 
  • Current Status:
    • Multiple regulators with overlapping mandates. 
    • Lack of autonomy of higher educational institutions and an environment of dependency and centralised decision making. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Setting up the National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA). 
      • This independent authority would replace the existing individual regulators in higher education, including professional and vocational education. 
      • This implies that the role of all professional councils such as AICTE and the Bar Council of India would be limited to setting standards for professional practice. 
      • The role of the University Grants Commission (UGC) will be limited to providing grants to higher educational institutions. 
    • Separating NAAC from the UGC into an independent and autonomous body. 
      • NAAC will function as the top level accreditor, and will issue licenses to different accreditation institutions, who will assess higher educational institutions once every five to seven years.   
• Establishment of new higher educational institutions:
  • Current Status:
    • Currently, higher educational institutions can only be set up by Parliament or state legislatures. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Policy proposes that these institutions could be allowed to be set up through a Higher Education Institution Charter from NHERA.   
• Restructuring of higher education institutions:
  • Into 3 types: ( gradually move towards full autonomy – academic, administrative, and financial. )
    • Research universities focusing equally on research and teaching;
    • Teaching universities focusing primarily on teaching;
    • Colleges focusing only on teaching at undergraduate levels.  
• Establishing a National Research Foundation:
  • Problem:
    • The Committee observed that the total investment on research and innovation in India has declined from 0.84% of GDP in 2008 to 0.69% in 2014. 
    • India also lags behind many nations in number of researchers (per lakh population), patents and publications. 

Investment on Research and Innovation

	Spending on research and innovation (% GDP)	Researchers (per lakh population)	Total Patent Applications
India	0.7	15	45,057
China	2.1	111	13,38,503
USA	2.8	423	605,571
Israel	4.3	825	6,419

• Policy Measure:
  • Establishing a National Research Foundation, an autonomous body, for funding, mentoring and building the capacity for quality research in India.
  • The Foundation will consist of four major divisions: sciences, technology, social sciences, and arts and humanities, with the provision to add additional divisions. 
  • The Foundation will be provided with an annual grant of Rs 20,000 crore (0.1% of GDP). 

• Moving towards a liberal approach:
  • Policy Measures:
    • Inter-disciplinary undergraduate programmes by redesigning their curriculum to include:
      • common core curriculum and
      • one/two area(s) of specialization.  
    • Students will be required to choose an area of specialization as ‘major’, and an optional area as ‘minor’. 
    • Four-year undergraduate programmes in Liberal Arts will be introduced and multiple exit options with appropriate certification will be made available to students. 
    • Further, within the next five years, five Indian Institute of Liberal Arts must be setup as model multidisciplinary liberal arts institutions. 
• Professional development of faculty:
  • Problems:
    • Poor service conditions and heavy teaching loads at higher education institutions.
    • Lack of autonomy and no clear career progression system are also major impediments to faculty motivation. 
  • Policy Measures:
    • Development of a Continuous Professional Development programme
    • Introduction of a permanent employment (tenure) track system for faculty in all higher education institutions by 2030. 
    • Further, a desirable student-teacher ratio of not more than 30:1 must be ensured. 
• Optimal learning environment:
  • Policy recommends that all higher education institutions must have complete autonomy on curricular, pedagogical and resource-related matters.

Education Governance

• Policy Measures:
  • Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog
    • Headed by the Prime Minister.
    • This body will be responsible for developing, implementing, evaluating, and revising the vision of education in the country on a continuous and sustained basis. 
    • It will oversee the implementation and functioning of several bodies including the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the proposed National Higher Education Regulatory Authority, and National Research Foundation. 
  • The Ministry of Human Resources and Development must be renamed as the Ministry of Education in order to bring focus back on education.

Financing Education

• The Draft Policy reaffirmed the commitment of spending 6% of GDP as public investment in education.
• In 2017-18, public expenditure on education in India was 2.7% of GDP.

Total Public Investment in Education

Country	Investment in 2017 (as % of GDP)
India	2.7
USA	5
UK	5.5
Brazil	6

• The Committee also observed operational problems and leakages in disbursement of funds. For instance, it observed that District Institutes of Education and Training have about 45% vacancies which have led to their allocations not being used or being used ineffectively. 
• It recommends optimal and timely utilization of funds through the institutional development plans.

Technology in Education 

• National Mission on Education through information and communication technology:
  • Virtual laboratories that provide remote access to laboratories in various disciplines.
  • National Education Technology Forum will also be setup under the Mission, as an autonomous body, to facilitate decision making on the induction, deployment and use of technology. This Forum will provide evidence-based advice to central and state-governments on technology-based interventions.  
• National Repository on Educational Data:
  • To maintain all records related to institutions, teachers, and students in digital form. 
  • Further, a single online digital repository will be created where copyright-free educational resources will be made available in multiple languages.

Vocational Education

• Vocational courses:
  • All school students must receive vocational education in at least one vocation in grades nine to 12. 
  • Proposed Higher Education Institutions must also offer vocational courses that are integrated into the undergraduate education programmes.
• National Committee for the Integration of Vocational Education: 
  • A separate fund will be setup for the integration of vocational education into educational institutions. 
  • The Committee will work out the modalities for the disbursement of these funds.

Adult Education

• Current Status:
  • As per Census 2011, India still had over 3.26 crore youth non-literates (15-24 years of age) and a total of 26.5 crore adult non-literates (15 years and above).
• Policy Measures:
  • Establishing an autonomous Central Institute of Adult Education, as a constituent unit of NCERT, which will develop a National Curriculum Framework for adult education.
  • Framework will cover five broad areas:
    • foundational literacy and numeracy,
    • critical life skills vocational skills development,
    • basic education,
    • continuing education. 
  • Adult Education Centres will be included within the proposed school complexes.
  • Relevant courses for youth and adults will be made available at the National Institute of Open Schooling.  
  • A cadre of adult education instructors and managers, as well as a team of one-on-one tutors will be created through a newly-established National Adult Tutors Programme.

Education and Indian Languages

• Policy Measures:
  • Medium of instruction must either be the home language/mother tongue/local language till grade five, and preferable till grade eight, wherever possible.
  • Three language Formula.
  • To promote Indian languages, National Institute for Pali, Persian and Prakrit will be set up.
  • All higher education institutes must recruit high quality faculty for at least three Indian languages, in addition to the local Indian language. 
  • Further, the mandate of the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology will be expanded to include all fields and disciplines to strengthen vocabulary in Indian languages.

Conclusion:

Implement all the policy recommendations in letter and spirit.