The first National Policy on Education was not conceived as an independent task. In fact, it was adopted as a Policy Resolution by the government of India in 1968 in which major recommendations of the Education Commission (1964-66) were accepted. This policy was not backed by any Program of Action (POA). It was left for the states and institutions to implement it. However, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) suo motu took upon itself the task of facilitating its implementation. Consequently, the NCERT developed “The Curriculum for the Ten-Year School – A Framework” in 1975 for the purpose of developing the school curriculum in tune with constitutional obligations, ethos and aspirations of Indian society. A year later, the NCERT developed another framework titled “Post-Secondary Education and its Vocationalization,1976”. This was the time when a non-statutory National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) existed as a department at NCERT. Therefore, the NCERT also developed a National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE) in 1978. These documents were the brainchild of the finest minds and talents. Had they been properly implemented across the states, there would have been little inevitability for multiple frameworks.
The second National Policy on Education was brought out in 1986 after detailed deliberations followed by a precursor document titled “Challenge of Education-A policy Perspective”. Subsequently, the NCERT developed a national framework titled, “Elementary Education-A Framework” in 1988, which covered the entire school education. Parallelly, the NCERT also developed the NCFTE in 1988. The NCERT has always given a great deal of thought and planning to the development of National Curriculum Frameworks (NCFs) both for school education and teacher education.
Keeping in view the societal and pedagogical changes as also the intents of the NEP, 1986, the NCERT again made the National Curriculum Framework for School Education in 2000 which encompasses all stages of school education commencing from pre-primary to higher secondary. With the change of the government in 2004, a necessity was felt to think afresh about the nature of educational experiences that were to be provided to children, and the attainments of those very experiences. So, once again the NCERT developed the National Curriculum Framework-2005 with a view to responding to the requirements of the modern times within the defined principles of the constitution.
In years gone by, the government in 2014 decided to bring out a new National Education Policy (NEP). The work on the new policy began with a concept note brought out by the MHRD. After a lot of detailed deliberations, a four-member Committee headed by Mr. T.S.R. Subramaniam submitted the draft NEP report in August 2016. But this report was not accepted by the authorities. Consequently, another ten-member Committee was constituted by the Ministry under the Chairmanship of Dr. K Kasturirangan in June 2017. The Committee submitted the draft report comprising 471 pages to the MHRD on December 15, 2018. This draft report was released by the Ministry in June 2019 with a view to seeking comments and suggestions from various stakeholders. With the approval of the Cabinet, the NEP was finally released on 29th July, 2020.
The NEP, 2020 has made as many as 13 specific recommendations with a timeline of activities to make them happen insofar as school education and teacher education are concerned. One of them is about universal provisioning of quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) within 2030. The second one is about development of a National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (NCPFECCE) in order to meeting out the 2030 time-limit. The third one is about the accomplishment of universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools by 2025. The fourth one is about development of a practice-based curriculum for Grades 6-8 and the fifth is about attainment of 100% Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) from pre-school to secondary level by 2030. The sixth one is about the development of a new and comprehensive National Curricular Framework for School Education, (NCFSE) within 2020-21by the NCERT. The seventh is regarding the development of guidelines for a transformative assessment system which should be in sync with the NCFSE (2020-21) within 2022-23.
The eighth recommendation is about the development of a common National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST) by 2022which ought to be reviewed and revised within 2030. The ninth is about gradual transition of all teacher education programs into multidisciplinary colleges and universities by 2030. The tenth recommendation is that a 4-year integrated B.Ed. degree will become the minimal qualifications for teaching in school by 2030. The eleventh one is that a new and comprehensive National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE) will be formulated, based on the principles of the NEP, by the NCTE in consultation with NCERT by 2021. The twelfth recommendation which relates rationalization and consolidation of schools for efficient resourcing and effective governance has to be accomplished within 2025. The thirteenth one is about providing exposure of vocational education to at least 50% of students through the school and higher education by 2025.
Similarly, the NEP has made four specific recommendations in the area of higher education with a timeline for their implementation and many more without any prescribed time limit. The first and the foremost goal as envisaged in the policy is that by 2030 all higher education institutions shall become multidisciplinary institutions and that by 2040 they shall aim to have larger enrolment preferably in the thousands. The second one is about having at least one large multidisciplinary institution in or near every district within 2030. The third one is to increase the GER from the current level of 26.3% to 50% by 2035.The fourth one is about constituting the Board of Governors (BoG) for mentoring of each and every institution by 2035.
There are several other vital recommendations in the area of higher education for which there are no timelines given in the policy. Most pertinent amongst them are switching over to 4-year undergraduate program with multiple exit and entry provisions, introduction of one-year Master’s program, discontinuation of M. Phil programs, direct entry of 4-year Bachelor’s degree graduates into Ph.D programs, formulation of Institution Development Plan (IDP), development of National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF), setting up of Academic Bank of Credit (ABC), National Research Foundation (NRF), Multidisciplinary Education and Research University (MERU), setting up of regulatory frameworks like Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) along with four verticals namely the National Higher Education Regulatory Council (HERC), National Accreditation Council (NAC), General Education Council (GEC) and Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC). But what is more important about these recommendations is that all of them are going to provide architecture frameworks besides acting as key enablers for the implementation of other recommendations. It is, therefore, imperative that these systems are put in place at the earliest, possibly as early as 2022.
Since the NEP, 2020 clearly set the deadlines, deliverables and responsibilities regarding implementation of certain key recommendations both in school and higher education, it was imperative to have worked backwards, breaking all of those critical tasks into smaller tasks and assigning responsibilities to right kind of professionals and national & state level resource institutions. But somehow that seemed to have not happened as some of the deadlines have already expired, especially in school education, without any sign of substantial progress thus far. As the facts speak, it took about 14 months for the government to think of developing four National Curriculum Frameworks (NCFs)namely the National Curriculum Framework for School Education, National Curriculum for Early Childhood Care and Education, National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education and National Curriculum Framework for Adult Education. The government has now constituted a 12-member National Steering Committee (NSC) on 21st of September, 2021 under the Chairmanship of Dr. K. Kasturirangan. The NSC has been given a tenure of three years from the date of the notification.
The NSC is expected to oversee the entire process of development of all four NCFs and participate in leadership positions. It is believed that there are going to be different National Focus Groups to develop position papers on different aspects of NCFs. Besides, there will be State Curriculum Groups that will develop State Curriculum Frameworks. The NSC would draw inputs from all the stakeholders including national level resources institutions like the NCERT and the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) before putting their seal of approval on NCFs. Once the Frameworks are ready, only then the task of developing curricular materials in the form of textbooks, handbooks and workbooks could commence. Development of Textbooks is quite an involved exercise which would entail a detailed analyses of current realities including strengths and shortcomings of existing curricular materials. And, then textbook development is just one part of the exercise, their printing and making them available all over the country before the commencement of the academic session is going to be another time-consuming and important task.
If one believes that the NSC would not seek any extension and accomplish its task of finalizing all the four Frameworks within the stipulated time frame of three years that is by September, 2024, development of curricular materials in the form of textbooks, handbooks and workbooks would take another two years and their printing and distribution would take a minimum of one more year. It means that implementation of this part of policy recommendation might not take place before 2027. Thus the timelines as envisaged in policy would probably overshoot its target considerably. Therefore, despite a certain lapse of time, the NSC should now immediately identify the right kind of professionals in each of the four areas and look for expeditious documents on each subject to avoid any further delays.
It hardly needs any mention that even when a new curriculum framework is made, the basic universality of the exact disciplines like sciences and mathematics is not going to change. The focus will continue to remain on universal abilities like problem-solving, analytical abilities, reasoningabilities, creativity, scientific temper, etc. But there would be a necessity to focus on certain specific focal points which emerging realities warrant. While the NEP has laid emphasis on fundamental duties enshrined in Article 51-A of the constitution, efforts need to be made to incorporate in the architecture of frameworks the processes that can help combat the menace of evils like superstitions, radicalism, intolerance and narrow-mindedness.
It would have been appropriate if simultaneously with the announcement of the policy, necessary responsibilities of the organizations connected with school as well as higher education both at national and state levels were initiated. If progress continues at its current pace and does not accelerate, the implementation of the policy might grossly miss the timeline set by the NEP, 2020. Setting a time frame for the implementation of all the recommendations of the policy, under the current circumstances, would require an intelligent guess.
The writer is former Chairman, UGC. Views expressed are personal.