ON INDIA™S 66th REPUBLIC day (January 26), the Union government invited public participation on the website http://www.mygov.in to help prepare the long-awaited New Education Policy (NEP). A set of 33 ˜themes™ have been identified ” 20 in higher education and 13 in school education ” for public participation and debate. According to a note of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry, œthe objective of the consultation process is to ensure that an inclusive, participatory and holistic approach is undertaken, which takes into consideration expert opinions, field experiences, empirical research, stakeholder feedback, as well as lessons learnt from best practices. The slogan of the new NEP initiative is œeducate, encourage, enlighten. Closure date: March 31. Among the 13 themes of school education on which public comments and suggestions are invited are improving learning outcomes, extending the outreach of secondary and senior secondary education, strengthening vocational education, reforming school exam systems, revamping teacher education, etc. Likewise, the 20 themes on higher education opened up for public debate include governance reforms, ranking and accreditation, regulation, role of Central institutions, improving state universities, integrating skill development programmes in higher education, promoting online courses and technology enabled learning, among others. The invitation to the public to participate in the process of formulation of the New Education Policy 2015, to revise and update the NEP of 1986 modified in 1992, is in consonance with the BJP™s 2014 election manifesto which had promised a new education policy. To her credit, shortly after her surprise appointment as Union HRD minister, former TV star Smriti Irani said the new NEP would involve public participation and exhaustive public consultations starting from children and parents from the village to block level in a process that could stretch over a year. Unsurprisingly, this break away from the traditional process is causing disquiet within academia and educationists. œThere™s a lot of confusion within academia about the new NEP Policy formulation which is professional work requiring an orderly process. It involves identifying issues followed by choice analysis done by education experts. Processing a huge volume of suggestions from the lay public will be an impossible task, says Dr. Veera Gupta, professor of educational policy at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, Delhi, speaking œnot in any official capacity but as a citizen. Although there™s some substance in Gupta™s argument, the plain truth is that for the past 67 years since independence, education policy and syllabus formulation has been restricted to education bureaucrats and selected experts with disastrous results. In early childhood, primary, secondary and higher education, post-independence India, which still hosts the world™s largest population of illiterates, lags way behind Western and even parvenu South-east Asian countries. œA new inclusive process is needed to formulate education policies and syllabuses. Contemporary parents and even children are well-informed about latest trends and developments in advanced countries which they learn from gadgets, games, e-books, social media and the web. The involvement of consumers of education with policy formulation is a welcome development, says Dr.…
