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The concept of a National System of
Education implies that, up to a given level, all students, irrespective of
caste, creed, location or sex, have access to education of a comparable
quality. This has sought to be achieved by successive governments in India. In
achieving this aim, the guiding forces are the National Policy on Education
documents of 1968, and 1986 under the Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi and
Rajiv Gandhi, and most recently by the Right to Education Act which came into
force in 2009.
The 1986 policy sought to address the lacunae observed in the 1968 policy
by focussing on education for women, for the marginalised sections, minorities,
the differently abled and also adult education. The policy defined
and recommended Universal Elementary Education (UEE) embodying the concepts of
universal access, universal retention and universal attainment. In order to
address the widening class distinctions, and social segregation, NPE also
recommended Common School System, where "children from different social
classes and groups come together under common public school and thus promote
the emergence of an egalitarian and integrated society”.
In 1993, in a PIL ‘Unnikrishnan
versus state of Andhra Pradesh’, the Supreme court of India ruled that, “Education
is a fundamental right that follows from the Right to life in Article 21 of the
Constitution”. However, there was no legislative follow up from this for many
years, primarily due to a volatile political situation at home in the following
few years. In 2002, the 86th Constitutional Amendment of India added
Article 21A stating that, “The state shall provide free and
compulsory education to all children of the age 6 to 14 years in such as a way
as the State may, by law, determine”. This led to the formulation of the
Right to Education Act, which was passed by the UPA Government and became a law
in 2009.
Today, the results of the Right to
Education Act and allied education policies like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the
mid day meal scheme are there for all to see. More and more children are now
going to school, literacy rates are rising. The provision of seats for the EWS
category has ensured that students from the economically deprived sections are
not deprived of the benefits of education. Yet, we notice that gaps do remain –
not only at implementation level, but recent figures have also pointed out how
dropout rates are increasing in the post ‘compulsory’ period, how the mid day
meal scheme is being manipulated etc. The recent mid day meal tragedy in Bihar
is just a case in point of problems with implementation.
Today, as we have a new generation of
youngsters, the education system in this country needs a drastic overhaul.
There have been a number of attempts to streamline and review the CBSE in
keeping with the times, but it has also often been seen that students scoring
impossibly high marks in the CBSE often have no real grounding in the concepts.
Students with nearly 100 marks in English often cannot string together a
paragraph of correct English. Education in India needs to focus less on rote
learning, and ‘keywords’ and more on concepts and processes. Similarly, the
higher education system too needs an overhaul. The recent shift by Delhi
University to a Four Year Undergraduate Program has been controversial. This
new system, along with the move to a semester based system, rather than an
annual system does have its benefits, which however, have become eclipsed due
to an apparent lack of proper planning. For instance, how useful would a basic
Foundation course in English be for a student already pursuing an Honours
degree in the subject? Or a course in Maths for someone who has had no contact
with the subject since Class VIII? The focus in India needs to shift to the
higher education system – radical changes are the need of the hour, but these
need to be well thought out and then implemented. Education needs to be
equitable. Students need to feel that they are gaining something from the
system that will empower them in the future. More skill development and
vocational courses, employment generation opportunities need to be provided by
the education system. A number of these ideas have been articulated in the 12th
Plan for Education, but it is upto the people of this country, especially the
youth, to ensure that implementation does not fail. These are the challenges
and opportunities facing Indian education today.
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