New Education policy for New India needs to be unspooled fast

Is it not already late for Indian government to roll out its education policy as four years of the new government in office are nearly over ?. Ideally the new education policy should have been rolled out  soon after coining major missions such "Make in India", "Digital India", "Skill India" and " Start up India", well intentioned and well thought but in the absences of a well defined and well articulated education policy such novel missions would face the scarcity of talent pool, lack of  continuous supply of innovations, easy availability of advanced science and technology and above all the vital ecosystem to harness creativity and enterprising minds   that are required to make astounding success and create India of our dream, said eminent academician Professor PB Sharma, President of Association of Indian Universities, AIU while addressing the ASSOCHAM summit on Policy Reforms for Higher Education for Excellence, Employability and Entrepreneurship, at Delhi on February 17th , 2018.

Perhaps, it is still not too late, as the committee to draft the New Education Policy headed by India's eminent Scientist Dr Kasturirangan is in the process of finalizing it's report. The New Education Policy must come out with a clear policy framework that shall address the formidable challenge of quality and relevance of primary education and quality and relevance of education and research in the higher education sector. 

The New policy should be targeted to boost employability of professional education, from currently 15-20 % to 120% on one hand and ensuring relevance of research and innovations to the needs of the society and industry at home on the other. It should also meet the regional and global aspirations. We need to align India's Education Policy to National Development to pay attention to creating “Advantage India” from the efforts we invest in education and research and make education a powerful vehicle of societal transformation, says Prof Sharma.

Unfortunately, the goal of successive education policies in the past revolved around increasing access in the name of increased Gross Enrolment Ratio, GER, in higher education and inclusive education being grossly misunderstood as driving everyone towards university education while focus on quality and relevance took a back seat. The net result being that we have achieved significant increase in GER, currently just over 25% but with utterly low quality of out turn and also low employability. After all you get what you plan!

So the prime question is whether the new education policy this time shall have a radical departure from the approach to policy formulation in the past  ?.

To begin with, we would have liked that an approach paper to the new education policy should have been drafted with due diligence by the Niti Ayog and it should have clearly spelled out the major goals of the new policy. But now at least we have a few drafts of new education policy such as that of TSR Subramaniam report and a well articulated vision documents such as FICCI Higher Education Report of 2012 and Yes Bank Global Institute report on Higher education in India, 2017.

The AIU,in it's submission to the New Education Policy Drafting Committee in November last year, has made it clear that unless the new education policy is targeted to provide to the Nation a policy thrust to make education a powerful vehicle for National Development and attaining global esteem, education in India shall continue to reel under the crisis of poor quality and loss of values. 


The AIU in its documents presented to the Dr Kasturirangan committee also advocates for focus on “relevance driven excellence”, making Universities as the  " Factories of Job Creation", harnessing creativity and innovativeness by making universities as "Cradles  of Innovation and New Enterprise Development" and engaging the young inspired minds of students by promoting extended “learning by doing” rather than master minding the contents of the text books as in the past. 

The AIU documents also strongly advocates for autonomy of universities and institutions of higher learning, but with a caution that autonomy and accountability should go hand in hand so that autonomy becomes "Freedom to Excel" and not the  "Freedom to Exploit" as in past. It is here the role of regulators is not to prescribe the curriculum but to enforce quality standards and facilitate the growth of scholarship and knowledge creation. 

The new education drafting committee headed by Dr Kasturirangan is   well advised to look into the draft national education framework left behind by Dr Sam Pitroda in his Knowledge Commission Report to the Nation 2006 and 2007 where integration of Education with Research and integration of Knowledge and Skills have been strongly advocated.

Dr Kasturirangan Committee is also well advised to take note that while on one hand India is reeling under the crisis of loss of human values and lack of focus on national and global aspirations, the integration of education with values should form a strong pillar of strength of the new education system that the new education policy intends  shall promote.

The signature towers of the universities of tomorrow should be the Knowledge Innovation Incubation towers and Centres of Human Developments promoting universal human values, work ethics and professional morality.  .

I want to see the inclusive education redefined. The  inclusive education that the new education policy intend to promote should mean inclusion and integration of education with values, education for employability and entrepreneurship and education for Nation building and for creating global esteem, said Professor Sharma who chaired the panel discussion that was contributed by a number of eminent panelists that included eminent academicians such as Prof MM Ansari, former member of UGC  , Dr Gurmeet Singh Vice Chancellor of Pondicherry University and CEO of ICT Academy Mr M Shivkumar among others.