Dr Manasvi M. Kamat
In the recent judgement released last week, the Kerala High Court stayed Kerala government’s order to merge high school and higher secondary directorates into a single entity as enumerated by the Khader Committee. The single judge bench in its order referred to the Central Government’s Draft National Education Policy (NEP) and questioned the Kerala government if their intended implementation has been in accordance with the NEP, for which the State had no logical answer.
The NEP 2019 when implemented will certainly override all attempts by the States to reform their education system in isolation, cancelling the Khader Committee report’s recommendations. Kerala Government in 2017 had constituted a three-member committee headed by M A Khader to study the measures to be taken for improving the quality of school education from pre-school to higher secondary education and the committee had submitted its preliminary report to the CM Pinarayi Vijayan in January 2019.
If the view of educationists is to be believed, the implementation of Khader Committee recommendations was an attempt to bring uniformity in the education sector to ensure a smooth flow of learning from classes 1-12. The Draft NEP also talks of similar reforms. The fact, however, remains that the Kerala Government on its own will not be able to pursue its reform agenda in education at present pursuant to the order of its High Court. Compare the above issue with other States like Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. With effect from April this year the primary and upper primary schools running separately are merged into junior high schools from classes 1 to 8 in UP, while in the State of Karnataka, its then CM Siddaramaiah in the 2016-17 budget had announced the formulation of an action plan to bring secondary and pre-university education under single administration. The Karnataka government way back in October 2017 initiated the process of bringing high school education and pre-university under one wing, a full five years after a government-appointed committee recommended doing so to provide barrier-free education to students.
Just like UP, Kerala and Karnataka all States in India follow a ‘water-tight compartment system’ of education and are categorised into pre-primary, primary, high school / secondary, and higher secondary sections, separated from the collegiate (3-year) and university-level (2 year +) education. These different sections are managed by different divisions or in some cases directorates/departments. It is universally argued that this division breaks the continuity required for students to reach higher education, and hence it would be of greater relevance and need of the hour to merge them into one entity. Unfortunately the reform efforts of the Kerala Government were struck down even when States like UP and Karnataka carried out similar measures.
The draft NEP has now suggested the culture of composite schools, created through ‘vertical integration’ to improve efficiency, facilities, and the curriculum. The policy also talks of integration of school education system in the country by recommending a replacement of the existing 10+2 format with a 5+3+3+4 structure. This implies five years of a ‘Foundational Stage’ that will include three years of pre-primary and classes 1 and 2. This will be followed by three years of ‘Preparatory Stage’, three years of middle school and four years of secondary stage.
Another glaring contradiction in policy could be cited here. The NEP has suggested that our higher education system be brought under a single regulator called as the ‘National Higher Education Regulatory Authority’ (NHERA) with UGC expected to only act as grant-providing body. The likes of AICTE, MCI and National Council for Teacher Education should evolve into making way for the new regulatory and professional standard setting body as per the draft NEP. Given the enormous manpower of these bodies presently it will be no surprise that the new body will have divisions to look into matters concerning the technical medical and teacher education etc. Thus if one chooses to use the same manpower and the systems from the earlier lot, it is not expected to entail any changes in the new system with the same old wheels.
Another apex body ‘National Research Foundation’ is proposed by draft NEP for building research capacity across higher education. There is no doubt that India needs to build its research capabilities, but there is enough historical skepticism as the same institutions have been earlier asked to discourage research. This is another contradiction. There is also a proposal in the draft NEP to get 200 global universities to build their campuses in India. It would have been of great sense if we could have help lift at least two universities from India to reach in the top-200, than have 200 new universities set up their campuses here. India is a country where widest massification of education persists. Education in India is also accompanied by wide regional disparities, persisting social inequalities and glaring contradictions. The challenge now for the ensuing NEP is to address these contradictions and provide affordable, quality education in a period of market-led reforms.
