Draft of National Education Policy 2019

Before 2019, it was 1986 when the last National Education Policy (NEP) was released followed by some modifications made to it in 1992. At that time, the priorities of the education system were quite different in contrast with today’s scenario. As a reflection of the changing society, there arises a need to make changes to the education policy as well. In 2017, a committee was formed to draft a new National Education Policy by considering the current scenario and to implement the changes that are important to be made to its previous version. 

The members of the committee worked under the chairmanship of Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan and came up with the draft of the new National Education Policy 2019 which contained all the recommendations for making the changes in primary, secondary, and higher education systems. This draft was then handed over to the central government.

The central government, however, has not yet considered the recommendation proposed in the draft to make Hindi compulsory. The Central Government has also made public the new education policy 2019 pdf in order to have the common people’s opinion over the new policy.

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Major changes proposed in the draft of National Education Policy 2019

• Access, Equity, Quality, Accountability, and Affordability as foundational pillars:

The NEP 2019 has been drafted on the pillars of Access, Equity, Quality, Accountability, and Affordability. These are the basis of any idea/recommendation proposed in the draft of national education policy 2019.

• Extension of Right to Education Act, 2009:

It is recommended in the draft to modify the Right to Education Act of 2009 by extending it to the age group of 3 to 18 years (at the place of 6 to 14 years). The stages are further categorized into 4 subdivisions as follows:

1. Foundational stage (for 3 to 8 years age group)- three years for pre-primary followed by grades 1 and 2.

2. Preparatory stage (for 8 to 11 years age group)- grades 3 to 5.

3. Middle stage (for 11 to 14 years age group)- grades 6 to 8.

4. Secondary stage (for 14 to 18 years age group)- grades 9 to 12.

• Renaming of MHRD:

The draft contains a recommendation to rename MHRD as ‘Ministry of Education (MoE)’.

• Integration of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) to school education:

The new policy suggests Early Childhood Care and Education be an integral part of school education and reconfigure the curricular and pedagogical structures.

• The compulsion of free education up to 12th:

A proposal to provide compulsory and free education to all is also there in the new education policy of 2019.

• Reorganization of schools:

The schools to be transformed into school complexes and the content load or the syllabi to be reduced.

• Abolishment of unnecessary hard separation of learning areas:

The strict separation of the streams will be replaced by a more flexible division of the subjects along with many customization options added for the choice of the subjects, especially for secondary education. Subjects like arts, music, yoga, sports, and crafts, etc. will be considered to be curricular. The aim behind this is to develop life skills and core capacities in these domains of learning.

• Standardized Teacher Education bodies:

All teacher education and training programs will be driven through standardized large universities and multi-disciplinary institutions or colleges rather than substandard teacher education bodies.

• Upgraded minimum qualification of teachers:

The minimum qualification of the teachers will now be changed to a 4-year stage-specific B.Ed. This decision is intended to improve the quality of education to match today's requirements of educational standards.

• Restructured higher education institutions:

A recommendation is made to restructure the higher educational bodies in following three types:

1. Focusing on high-quality teaching and world-class research.

2. Focusing on high-quality teaching across all disciplines along with fairly remarkable contributions to research.

3. Focusing on high-quality teaching targeting undergraduate education.

• Restructuring the Undergraduate programs:

It is suggested to restructure the undergraduate programs such as B.Sc, B.A., B.Com, etc. of three to four years duration and add multiple options for entrance to and exit from such programs.

• Proposal of Rashtriya Siksha Ayog as new apex body:

Formation of a new apex body; Rashtriya Siksha Ayog in order to govern, control and regulate the various new programs upon the implementation of the new education policy and work as a coordinating body between the State and the Centre.

• Independent bodies for setting the standard of education institutions:

Recommendation to have distinct and independent bodies to perform actions like Accreditation, Funding, Standard setting and Regulation on educational institutes with the suggestion to make National Higher Education Regulatory Authority the only body in charge of regulating the higher education institutions including the undergraduate educational institutions.

• Revamping of NAAC and formation of accreditation ecosystem:

Formation of professional standard-setting bodies for all professional education institutions, revamp NAAC to form an accreditation ecosystem, transform the University Grants Commission (UGC) to Higher Education Grants Commission (HEGC).

• Equal recognition of public and private institutions:

Both the public and private educational institutions must be recognized equally to ensure that education still remains a ‘not for profit’ domain.

• Promotion of higher education:

Several minute changes have also been suggested to match the level and quality of education with international standards, increase its reach and accessibility to all citizens irrespective of their gender, social or religious backgrounds, etc. Some initiatives targeting adult education and lifelong learning mottos are also recommended.

Important Changes to be brought to Educational Institutions

• Minimum enrollment criteria

About 8000 colleges in India are having less than 100 students enrolled in them per year. Mostly such colleges are running with really poor facilities and very few teachers or professors available to teach in all the disciplines provided by their institutes. Such colleges are obviously not capable of yielding quality education. In fact, they will fall much below the standards of an accrediting body’s minimum requirements to provide the accreditation. Such institutes will be targeted and either discontinued or merged with other institutes.

• New colleges

It seems quite obvious that most of the colleges that will be established in the future will be autonomous. It is obvious too that these colleges, being newly founded, can’t fulfill all the conditions mandatory for the autonomy of an institute. For this reason, there must be a different set of guidelines that such colleges must fall under up to 5 years since their foundation. Such colleges shall start with an undertaking by them to fulfill the criteria of an autonomous institute within 5 years failing which they will have to shut down.

• Research Foundation

Attempts to promote research work may not be very fruitful if not regulated perfectly. For improving the effectiveness of the research activities, some recommendations are made in the new policy which may be summarized in the following four statements:

1. Young teachers will be provided with suitable grants to encourage them towards the research field.

2. For important research domains, institutes will be provided with grants to collaborate and promote the research work on such domains. The grants will be passed only after sufficient evidence of the research activity going on.

3. For huge projects demanding more than a threshold amount of funds, it will become mandatory to collaborate with some organization (another Higher Education Institute, DRDO Lab, CSIR Lab, or some reputed industry, etc.) for the project.

4. The monitoring of the project will be improved and strengthened in order to ensure the utilization of the funds in carrying out valuable research activities instead of producing intellectual deliverables.

• Qualifications of the faculties for professional education

The new education policy will introduce new minimum qualifications for the faculties of professional education institutes. It suggests that the teachers and professors of a professional education institution must have a Master’s degree in Teaching and Research along with a Master’s degree in their specialization. This may however result in a drop in the interest of people towards the teaching profession. Hence, it is also suggested to implement this while keeping in mind the annual requirement of teachers required and the number of applications received.

Did you know?

• Before the release of the new education policy 2019, the last education policy was introduced back in 1986 which was modified in 1992.

• For information purposes and in order to have the people’s opinion, MHRD has made the draft of National Education Policy 2019 public.

The National Education Policy of 2019 is performing its aim successfully of creating a better quality of education for everyone. The main targets areas of this new education policy are restructured higher education institutions, restructuring the Undergraduate programs, the proposal of Rashtriya Siksha Ayog as a new apex body, Independent bodies for setting the standard of education institutions, revamping of NAAC, and formation of accreditation ecosystem, Equal recognition of public and private institutions, Promotion of higher education, etc.