New Education Policy

Some of India’s key academics in the field of education have expressed concern over experts being left out of consultations for the proposed National Education Policy, which will guide education in India for the next few decades. Weeks ago, a body of India’s elite educationists wrote to T.S.R. Subramanian, the head of a committee set up by the Human Resource Development Ministry to frame the proposed policy, about the absence of academics in the consultations. The signatories include Delhi University professor Poonam Batra, JNU professor Saumen Chattopadhyay, and Professors Nandini Manjrekar and Disha Nawani of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, among others. The absence of serious academic scholars in the current consultations has been glaring. Scholarship on education and the extensive knowledge base of teaching, learning and the socio-economic dimensions of education should necessarily be a part of this process,” the Comparative Education Society of India (CESI) wrote to Mr. Subramanian, who heads the MHRD’s Committee for the Evolution of the New Education Policy. The letter also points out issues that should be deliberated by the panel, like what it sees as a negative trend towards commercialisation of education and control over and contractualisation of teachers. It lays stress on autonomy of academic institutes, particularly in framing their curriculum. The letter also advises the panel to foreground its policy in the legal provisions provided by the Right to Education Act and demands a greater role of the state in strengthening the public education system. Mr. Subramanian said the concerns of the academics were misplaced. For, the panel had met a cross-section of teachers to understand from them what ailed education in the country.