New NEP urgently required

– JS Rajput is former director of National Council of Educational Research & Training and National Council for Teacher Education Ex facie, India’s education system has grown impressively in the post-independence period in terms of expansion in the number of schools, colleges and universities, teachers, enrollments, budget allocations, literacy etc. Add to this India’s contributions and achievements in the fields of science and technology with the latest feat being a mission to Mars! And not to forget the pride of place the country’s young scientists and entrepreneurs have earned for themselves in NASA and Silicon Valley. Nevertheless, within academia and among knowledgeable monitors of Indian education, there is unanimity that the system requires serious scrutiny, revaluation and reform. The last National Education Policy was formulated in 1986 (NEP-1986) and revised in 1992. During the past two decades since then, the tempo of change in education in terms of awareness of the importance of education and near-universal enrollment in primary education has been impressive. But now academics and parents are becoming seriously concerned about the quality of education being dispensed across the spectrum, in the country’s schools, colleges and universities. In particular, the intelligentsia is alarmed about the erosion of values and commitment within the system. India grudgingly hosts every sixth child in the world. How grudgingly is indicated by the grim statistic that every second child in India suffers moderate to severe malnutrition? This is not a new discovery, it’s been a reality for several decades. Over 120 million children are receiving free mid-day meals in their schools. But it’s an open secret — except in government — that the world’s largest free mid-day meals scheme suffers bureaucratic apathy, corruption and mismanagement. With 79 percent of children in the six-35 months’ age group suffering from anaemia, it’s no surprise that 40 percent of them drop out of the school system. Even as highly respected NGOs such as Pratham and CRY routinely confirm these grim statistics and highlight poor student learning outcomes, the official response is tepid. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2013 which tracks the learning outcomes of rural primary schools in 567 districts (of India’s 640 districts) indicates that the proportion of class III children in government primaries who can read a class I text has dropped from 46 percent in 2008 to 30 percent last year, and the proportion of class III children who can recognise numbers up to 100 has plunged from 70 to 30 percent. The latest CRY annual report (2011) states that only 54 percent of India’s children receive full immunisation, and seven of every 1,000 die within one year of birth while education planners turn a blind eye to the reality that 11.8 percent of India’s 480 million children are employed as child labour. In particular, the children of construction workers who migrate from villages with entire families have neither safety nor any provision for schooling, let alone creches and child care centres. The no-detention policy until class IX — which has…