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Modi Government gearing up for the mother of all battles in education
The Modi Government is all set to mould the present education system through various measures like the National Education Policy, bringing more focus on vocational training, bringing more accountability to the time spent by teachers.
Narendra Modi’s term has seen numerous ideological battles, including debates over intolerance and nationalism which almost seemed like storms. But there is something approaching fast which has the potential to change the entire landscape.
The biggest battle in the near future is going to be fought over education where the government wants to mould the present system which they view as biased, antiquated, irrelevant for the population, and a refuge of work dodgers and the rank incompetent.
While the face of this storm is going to be Smriti Irani there are many faceless and nameless people at work. The first salvo is going to be the National Education Policy. Meetings have ostentatiously been held in 94,000 villages across the country, and more than 1.1 lakh written suggestions are being screened and processed in preparation of the final draft.
This new policy is geared to reinvent the structure of education in India not so much the content. Vocational training, for example will likely be a part of core education. Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) may move from the periphery to the mainstream.
In villages, the government may bring rural equivalents of ITI to impart rural-focused vocational training. There could also be a proposal to have Navodaya Vidyalayas (NVs) — residential schools for poor students in the ancient gurukul tradition — in every district.
To encourage more students to take up a career in the armed forces, the sainik school network may be expanded. Currently there are more than 20 operational sainik schools. The big push of the policy will be on regular and time-bound training of teachers. Even yoga will be integrated in this. But crucially, strict monitoring of how much time teachers are spending in the class and how much on junketeering abroad has already started.
Also, India’s government institutes may finally adopt the Western "publish-or-perish" motto, in which teachers need to constantly contribute and reinvent.
Besides bringing in accountability of teachers and administrators, the government wants to ensure that non-NET scholarships are distributed among women, minorities, disabled and backward castes; that there is last-mile utilisation of funds; and that students get fellowships through direct benefit transfer.
If all this wasn’t explosive enough the content is what is going to violently rock the boat. The new National Curriculum Framework, which may be introduced later this year, could be explosive. The Punjab and Haryana High Court in November last year asked NCERT to look into 182 supposed discrepancies and mistakes in Classes VI to XII history books.
The High Court intervention came in response to a PIL lodged by the National Centre for Historical Research and Comparative Studies (NCHRCS). The centre’s director, Hemant Goswami, argued that certain shlokas from the Rig Veda and other scriptures had been mischievously translated to mean exactly their opposite.
For the first time in independent India, the Left-of-Centre narrative in education will be seriously challenged in the coming months; both structurally and in content. This is the battle of all battles, and much ink will spill.