Realizing the desired emphasis on digitisation and virtual teachinglearning process, higher spending on education is desirable to upgrade digital infrastructure. Getting private sector spending may be a plausible solution. Instead of building new infrastructure in the domain of higher education institutions, the existing government structures could be rebuilt in modern mode. Public-Private-Partnerships could be reinvented in a better way so that equitable education opportunities to all through EdTech platforms can be extended. Our immediate attention is caught by EdTech in the new normal situation in education which holds the promise of a more effective and equitable education experience.
This commitment holds sway of late with advanced technology at the forefront. Augmentation of quality of teaching goes hand in hand with these initiatives to prepare a pool of trained manpower for post-Covid campuses. In this respect, the government may collaborate with the private industry to ensure continuous skill enhancement of educators. EdTech rose to the occasion during the prolonged lockdown periods. It was feared that prolonged out-of-school learning might lead to children staying away from school systems. But later years saw improvement in Gross Enrollment Ratio in schools. In FY22, enrollment in India’s nearly 1489115 schools stood at 26.5 crore children with 19.4 lakh additional children enrolled in primary to higher secondary levels. Schemes such as Samagra Shiksha, RTE Act, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya and the POSHAN Scheme play an important role in enhancing enrollment and retention of children in schools.
The education infrastructure in the form of schools, amenities and digitisation has to be steadily promoted along with a focus on pedagogy. Under the ICT component of the Samagra Shiksha Scheme, the government is bound to support classrooms and ICT labs in schools, including support for hardware, educational software and e-content for teaching. The availability of teachers measured by a pupil-teacher ratio ~ an indicator which is inversely related to improvement in the quality of education ~ has to be improved at all levels. Under the PM SHRI scheme 2022, there is provision for setting up more than 14500 PM SHRI schools, over a period from FY23 to FY27 by strengthening the existing infrastructure in all the schools. These schools will be equipped with modern infrastructure and showcase the implementation of the NEP.
With a focus on developing cognitive, effective and psychomotor abilities and also early literacy and numeracy for students in the age groups of 3+, 4+ and 5+, Project Balvatika was launched in 49 Kendriya Vidyalayas. The Samagra Shiksha Scheme has been aligned with the recommendations of the NEP and extended from FY22 to FY26. In spite of an increase in awareness to get children educated and their enrolment, India’s learning crisis remains critical. NEP-2000, which suggested a huge restructuring of the school curriculum, envisages learners through the school and higher education system being exposed to vocational education.
Vocational courses through distance mode would also be encouraged. Skill-based training is being prioritized with greater implementation of modern technology. But there are challenges that the government must address in order to expedite the implementation process. In the absence of unequivocal operational guidelines regarding curriculum priorities, the education sector came up with different approaches recently to keep the show going. Some priorities concerned the academic skills and knowledge that students needed to maintain in subjects such as language, mathematics, science and history, considering the rest of the curriculum, say the arts, as non-existential.
Keeping the pandemic situation in mind, the idea already in vogue is that students were hardly able to transfer the knowledge and skill acquired in school to everyday situations. The narrative could accelerate the idea that school is boring and less worthy in the making of an individual.
It is worth mentioning that the OPEC called for an effort to make education more ‘meaningful’ through revamped curricula that are more challenging and interesting for students. The Council of Ministers of Education in Canada stressed the importance of giving priority to global competencies within curricula that could be leveraged in different situations. The Covid situation in our country raised questions about the usefulness of certain curriculum content. The NEP can draw on the UN’s 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” as a source of framing contextualized and authentic learning situations relating to the challenges facing mankind.
The NEP might require certain revisions in the areas of strengthening the normative framework of the RTE Act instead of restricting it. It will need to situate equity, inclusion and diversity accordingly. The one nation, one channel or one digital framework thereby may not be able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. While NEP-2020 lays emphasis on foundational literacy and numeracy, our youths are led to believe that those are not the only components that could lead them to build their careers. A lot remains to be done in order to improve the state of foundational literacy in the country, which includes increased investment in and strengthening of public education, a reduction in student-teacher ratios, a comprehensive revamp of teacher education, greater decentralization of decision-making and a focus on conceptualizing curriculum, textbooks, pedagogy and assessments.
NEP-2000 endorsing the 6 per cent norm certainly intends to curb commercialization of education, especially tertiary education. However, certain other provisions made therein may encourage private sector participation which may further lead to commercialization of private education. Research shows that public expenditure on education is a key factor fostering growth and reducing inequalities. In the US, school education is more or less public funded as higher education is left to the private sector, but still the economically poor are supported with public funding through scholarships.
In our country, the private sector continues to occupy the majority space in school and higher education as well. A country with nearly 50 per cent of its population below 25, India needs extra emphasis on education. Education, that happens to be on the Concurrent List, has seldom been a priority of either the Centre or state governments. The allocation for education in the current budget reflects the same trend and, like the previous budgetary exercises, lacks the components that can help the Indian education sector take a giant leap forward, especially when the NEP is allembracing. The task before the education minister is, of course, a challenging one.
A K GHOSH The writer, a former Associate Professor, department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata, is presently with Rabindra Bharati University