Draft National Education Policy, 2019

It is based on the report submitted by K. Kasturirangan Committee. The committee was setup in 2017 by Ministry of Human Resource Development to analyze and examine a humungous volume of suggestions, inputs, reports, and outcome documents that preceded its own efforts and come out with a policy that would stand relevant for atleast 20 years.

Basic features of the draft policy are as follows:

  • Early Childhood Care and Education: The draft Policy recommends developing a two-part curriculum for early childhood care and education. This will consist of: (i) guidelines for up to three-year-old children (for parents and teachers), and (ii) educational framework for three to eight-year-old children. This would be implemented by improving and expanding the anganwadi system and co-locating anganwadis with primary schools.
  • RTE Act, 2009: The coverage of the act would be extended and children between age group 3 to 18 would be covered. To promote age-appropriate learning levels, it recommends to review and if possible to do away with no-detention policy.
  • Curriculum Framework: The current structure of school education must be restructured on the basis of the development needs of students. This would consist of a 5-3-3-4 design comprising: (i) five years of foundational stage (three years of pre-primary school and classes one and two), (ii) three years of preparatory stage (classes three to five), (iii) three years of middle stage (classes six to eight), and (iv) four years of secondary stage (classes nine to 12).
  • School Infrastructure: It recommends doing away with small schools and merging them to create school complexes. It will house all neighboring public schools and conduct classes from pre-primary till class eight.
  • Teacher Management: It recommended for improving quality of teaching, a teacher must be trained and for that a 4 year integrated B.Ed. course would replace the current B.Ed. course. Also a teacher must be stationed in a school complex for atleast 5 to 7 years.
  • Regulatory Body: The Committee noted that the current higher education system has multiple regulators with overlapping mandates. This reduces the autonomy of higher educational institutions and creates an environment of dependency and centralised decision making. Therefore, it proposes setting up the National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA).
  • Other prominent features include – teaching hinterland students in regional languages, promoting technology in education at all levels, spending atleast 6% of the budget on education etc.

Annual Status of Education Report, ASER 2019

  • ASER 2019 survey is conducted in 26 districts across 24 states in India and the findings of the report are released in January, 2020. It is done by a Non-governmental Organisation Pratham since 2005 on annual basis.
  • ASER Report 2019 argues that a focus on cognitive skills rather than subject learning in the early years can make a big difference to basic literacy and numeracy abilities.
  • Tests included sorting images by colour and size, recognising patterns, fitting together a four-piece animal puzzle — as well as simple literacy and numeracy tests.

Outcomes

  • Of those children who could correctly do all three cognitive tasks, 52% could read words, and 63% could solve the addition problem.
  • Only 16% of children in Class 1 in 26 surveyed rural districts can read text at the prescribed level, while almost 40% cannot even recognise letters.
  • Only 41% of these children could recognise two digit numbers.
  • Many Indian parents choose government schools for girls in the age group of 4 to 8 years while they favour private schools for boys.
  • At least 25% of school children in the four-eight age groups do not have age-appropriate cognitive and numeracy skills, making for a massive learning deficit at a very early stage.
  • More than 90% of children in the 4-8 age groups are enrolled in some type of educational institution. This proportion increases with age, from 91.3% of all 4-year-olds to 99.5% of all 8-year-olds in sampled districts.
  • Children from less advantaged homes are disproportionately affected. Although almost half of all 4-year-olds and more than a quarter of all 5-year-olds are enrolled in anganwadis, these children have far lower levels of cognitive skill and foundational ability than their counterparts in private LKG/UKG classes.
  • Overall, 41.7% of children in class I are of the RTE-mandated age.
  • Gender gap in schooling: Parents choose government schools for girl students in the age group of 4 to 8 years while for boys, they prefer private schools – among 4-5-year-old children, 56.8 per cent girls and 50.4 per cent boys are enrolled in government schools or pre-schools, while 43.2 per cent girls and 49.6 per cent boys are enrolled in private pre-schools or schools.

Issues

  • Prominent aspects regarding education of PwDs have been left unaddressed like how would the teachers, who’ll be teaching these kids must be trained or specifying the qualifications needed.
  • Though it emphasizes on enhancing expenditure on education but doesn’t list out ways to do so.
  • The government must overcome the follies by making necessary changes in the policy before it is approved to make it more effective.

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