The new National Education Policy may be a jolt for a few but it is also a long-awaited positive development for many. In an emerging country like India, where impediments to social and economic growth are being attempted to overcome, the education policy should also evolve with the times –and after 34 years, we finally have an educational policy for a “progressive” India. While many experts have already commented on the NEP, I have not seen a student’s perspective so far. I feel that as a stakeholder, my views on the NEP as a student are also important to be heard. I wish to highlight certain aspects of the NEP that I would have been benefited by as a student, had it already been in place then.
First, let me focus on examinations in the prevailing education system which have traumatised the student community year after year. For many students in school, their entire schooling boils down to their performance in the dreaded “high-stakes” board exams. Everything they might have studied in those 12-odd years is eventually judged and evaluated by that single set of board exams. One doesn’t need to be smart to point out that this system is arbitrary and iniquitous. Instead of being evaluated continuously, students are forced to put all their eggs in one basket, which is quite counterintuitive to what we’re taught as students. In the new system, board exams will test primarily core capacities or competencies. Now, students will also get two attempts, at what they are told is the most important exam in their schooling lives, and the better of the two attempts will be chosen. Students are in essence competing with themselves now. It shouldn’t matter how much their peers might score. What should matter is if they can improve on themselves. It is extremely pleasurable to see yourself become better than what you were with the results right in front of you.
What else has drawn my attention to the NEP is its emphasis on using one’s mother tongue or local language in the early stages of a student’s schooling. Two changes I would have rejoiced as a school student are studying in my mother tongue in my initial years and having the option of multidisciplinary learning.
As someone who was born and brought up in Delhi and has Telugu as my mother tongue, I have a nagging guilt because I cannot read and write in the latter. It almost makes me wonder at times whether I value my mother tongue adequately. Studying in our mother tongue in our initial years will make us understand the importance of our language more and will help in better comprehension of concepts. It will also allow teachers to delve into important concepts expeditiously than spending the first 2-4 years teaching the students a new language, which is invariably English.
Multidisciplinary learning, as proposed in NEP, is something that still gets me excited as a 4th year engineering student. The dissolving of boundaries between science and the arts will be really good. Students from science opting for Hindustani vocal, for example, or students from fine arts taking up maths or physics simply because they enjoy those subjects and wish to learn more is a welcome move. This will also remove the hierarchy in schools which brands students with science subjects as smarter than those with the arts or humanities. Telling students at such an impressionable age that they are not smart enough, simply because our education system didn’t value their skill sets, is an extremely appalling practice that we have had all these years.
Most children born and brought up in cities have little to no vocational skills. Having vocational training right from the beginning is extremely important. I am glad that NEP puts a great focus on vocational training. This will also shed light on a very important social issue in our country where getting a degree (primarily, engineering) is the only way to be successful. The inclusion of vocational training from the very beginning will make society respect people with vocational skills. It will also open up many viable career options for thousands of people.
It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone when I say that the number of students with anxiety disorders, stress-related issues, and even clinical depression, is extremely high, and only seems to be increasing. Taking a year off to recover and recoup would benefit them. A student can finally take a break mid-degree and not lose their credits. All their credits will be stored in a “credit bank” and they can come back and pick up from where they left. This can potentially help many students with mental health problems.
Having said all of this, at the end of the day, the National Education Policy is what it says it is — just a policy. It still needs to be implemented properly. Just because a new building that needs to be built has a nice foundation, it doesn’t mean that the various architects, engineers and builders working on it will do a good job on the actual building. The benefits of the new NEP will be seen on the ground only when all the stakeholders work together to realise what is envisioned in the policy. Implementing such a largescale change in a country like India is not possible without its fair share of resistance. But hopefully, in due course of time, all of us will start observing the benefits of the NEP.