India’s National Education Policy has been a victim of ignorance

This is partly because two of these five years were roiled by the pandemic, forcing schools to shut down and governments to scramble. And then at least one year after that was spent on recovering lost learning. Combine that with the 20-year time horizon of the NEP and it does seem too early to say anything on how successful the policy has been.

But that would be a cop-out, because the NEP did set out milestones along this 20-year horizon. The clearer and more definitive ones were written down. So, while it is too early to tell its effect on Indian education, it’s not so when it comes to assessing the efforts to bring it to life on the ground.

While the NEP is more transformative for higher education than school education, I will limit my assessment to school education, which I observe closely.

Before that, some observations on the public discourse on the NEP in these five years—for both higher and school education. A surprising number of people and institutions are doing things in the name of NEP that are just not there in the policy.

An equally large number are attacking it for things that are not even implicitly there. The most amusing offenders are states on both ends of the spectrum—a few that have boldly declared that they have implemented the NEP fully while having done precious little, and then those that rail against the NEP while implementing many of its recommendations.

Some of this stems from a misreading or deliberate distortion of the policy, but some of it might be because people just don’t read, astonishing as this may be.

Some of them insist that they are implementing the NEP, even as they do things that are often antithetical to the letter and spirit of the policy. Others smugly contend that they have courageously attacked the evil that is the NEP.

Let us take two examples. The three-language formula has been a feature of Indian education since 1968. If anything, NEP 2020 made it more flexible and responsive to local and regional preferences.

Yet, it became a political flashpoint, with critics either unaware of the policy’s actual provisions or projecting their own anxieties onto it.

Similarly, claims that the policy promotes privatization are baffling to anyone who has actually read the document, which emphasizes strengthening public education.

To return to my very brief assessment of the milestones approached, I will describe three under-recognized shifts that are unfolding driven by the NEP—changes that will over time redefine Indian school education.

The first is a system-wide focus on early childhood education (ECE). Research has long shown that ages 3 to 8 are critical for every dimension of development of the child—physical, cognitive, social, ethical and emotional.

Yet, India’s education system has historically neglected this phase. Spurred by the NEP, there is widespread work on curricular transformation, infrastructure upgrades and teacher development for ECE. Everywhere in the country, you can hear the buzz of early childhood education, including in the vast public anganwadi system.

We are in the early stages, but this is laying the foundation for a truly equitable and effective system. Children from vulnerable and disadvantaged communities and homes will benefit the most—if we don’t let the momentum slip.

The second change is the policy push for mother tongue-based education in gaining early literacy. Evidence is clear that children learn best in a familiar language. Yet, India has not implemented this approach adequately, exacerbating the crisis we have in basic education.

The NEP’s approach effectively tackles the multilingual reality of our classrooms as well as aspirations for learning English. As states are beginning to adopt this approach, alongside implementing other key policy measures in foundational literacy as well as numeracy and teacher support, we are likely to see an improvement in basic educational outcomes.

The third and potentially even more far-reaching set of changes are in teacher education. For decades, the system for it has been marred by poor quality and corruption. In a very real sense, this state of teacher education has been at the heart of our troubles in school education.

The NEP has confronted all the issues in teacher education head-on. By introducing four-year integrated programmes in top universities—making them the benchmark qualification and moving the entire teacher education system to that approach—to complement decisive regulatory reforms, we have reached the cusp of a new era.

We often blame India’s Constitution for our own failings or use it to legitimize our whims. The NEP has also been treated a bit like that. But much like the Constitution, the National Education Policy has transformative potential. It is up to us to make what we will of it. For a start, we should at least read it.