Introduction
A new policy for education in India to purportedly harness whole-person development and produce competent individuals to eventually contribute to the building-up of a nation, has raised more perplexing questions than engage with much needed pathways towards progress. After a period of nearly four years devoted to drafting the policy, a comprehensive, and far-reaching National Education Policy 2020 was released in the year 2020.
Old Spirit – New Apprehensions
A closer examination reveals that the NEP 2020 has spontaneously drawn from ideas promulgated in earlier policy documents – the Yash Pal Committee report on Higher Education and the Justice Verma Committee report on Teacher Education, the National Curriculum Framework and the National Early Childhood Care and Education Policy of 2013. Furthermore, elements drawn from the UNESCO report ‘Learning the Treasure Within’, (Jacques Delors, 1996) is hard to ignore.
The NEP 2020 has set off a plethora of apprehensions among educationalists, thinkers, planners and politicians, some of which are — the conservative political agenda, ominous signals of withdrawal of public funding, a highly technical approach rather than practical guidelines, and a lack of understanding to acknowledge the equity dimension, namely the Constitutional guarantees for the underprivileged and disadvantaged groups.
Prof Sandra Joseph
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