India's Federalism and Education Policy
Recently, a retired civil servant asked a question towards the end of a webinar on the National Education Policy 2020 while referring to Centre-State relations and roles in education.
Background of Education System in Provinces
- Establishment of Central Advisory Board of Education: The system of education evolved in the provinces and the Central Advisory Board of Education was created to co-ordinate regional responses to common issues.
- Indian system going for Ministry of Education under the Union: The Constitution, in its original draft, treated the States as the appropriate sphere for dealing with education but unlike some other federal countries, India chose to have a Ministry of Education at the Centre.
- The Centre was expected to articulate aims and standards or to pave the road to nation-building and development.
- Introduction of professional fields in advanced institutions: After independence, a more substantial sphere of the Centre’s activities in education emerged in the shape of advanced institutions in professional fields and schools specifically meant for the children of civil servants transferable across India.
- 1986 Education Policy emphasised on national concerns and perspective: The Education Policy of 1986 emphasised national concerns and perspective without specifically referring to provincial practices that indicated strong divergence.
- The engagement with the States remained a function of the Planning Commissionand a burgeoning private sector had begun to push both public policy and popular perceptions of education.
Need for New Education System in India
- Universal Access to Quality Education: Education is fundamental for achieving full human potential, developing an equitable and just society, and promoting national development.
- The providing of universal access to quality education is the key to economic growth, social justice and equality, scientific advancement, national integration and cultural preservation.
- World is undergoing rapid changes in the knowledge landscape: With the rise of big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, many unskilled jobs worldwide may be taken over by machines.
- The need for skilled labour, particularly involving mathematics, computer science and data science, in conjunction with multi-disciplinary abilities across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, will be in rapidly increasing demand.
- Quickly changing employment and global ecosystem: It is becoming increasingly important that children not only learn but learn how to learn.
- Education must move towards less content and more towards learning about how to think critically and solve problems.
- Bridging the gap between learning outcomes: The gap between the current state of learning outcomes and what is desirable must be bridged through undertaking major reforms to bring the highest quality and integrity into the system, from early childhood education through higher education.
Education System under National Education Policy 2020
- The Indian education system works on three systems i.e. central system, state system and system based on purely private investment.
- The Central system is running an exam board that has an all-India reach through affiliation with English-medium private schools catering to regional elites.
- The two school chains run by the Centre are part of this system.
- The Central system also includes advanced professional institutes and universities that have access to greater per capita funding.
- The State system has advanced professional institutes and universities which cannot afford greater per capita funding as compared to institutions under Central system.
- The State system also features provincial secondary boards affiliating schools teaching in State languages.
- The third system is based on purely private investment as internationally accredited school boards and globally connected private universities are part of this third system.
Challenges to New Education System
- States have their own social worlds to deal with: The states often prefer to carry on with the ways they became familiar with in colonial days.
- The continuation of intermediate or junior colleges in several States more than half a century after the Kothari Commission gave its much acclaimed report.
- Imbalance between private autonomy and social justice in educational institutes:The Right to Education (RTE) Act is a parliamentary law, providing a set of standards for elementary education and a call to private schools to provide for social justice via the quota route.
- In higher education, such an attempt to balance private autonomy with an obligation to provide social justice is yet to be made in any palpable sense.
- Mismanagement in three system of education: The coordination among the three systems has proved unmanageable, even in purely functional terms.
- The coordination required in adherence to social responsibilities in a period of rapid economic change is a much harder challenge in the current education system.
- New policy seems to favour functional uniformity: The new policy seems to favour functional uniformity which is unlikely to offer any real solution.
- In higher education, it proposes nationally codified and administered measures to oversee institutional transformation across State capitals and district towns.
- The idea of a monolithic regulatory architecture to control a system that is privatising at a rapid pace suggests a tempting impulse rather than a considered plan.
Road ahead
- The Indian education system must respond to the specific milieu in which the young are growing up in order to fulfil its social role.
- India has sufficient experience of attempts made from the national level to influence systemic realities on the ground.
- The education must mediate between different social strata divided by caste and economic status.
- The recent attempt made by Tamil Nadu to create a modest quota in NEET for students who attended government schools points towards an endemic problem exacerbated by centralisation.
- The aim must be for India to have an education system that ensures equitable access to the highest-quality education for all learners regardless of social and economic background.
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