The New Education Policy

The long-awaited New Education Policy 2020 is India’s overarching policy framework for the development of the country’s education sector. After receiving over 20,000 comments from stakeholders and spending four years in development, it was finally released in July 2020. The NEP has tremendous potential to drive dramatic change Indian education and should grow opportunities for international partners wishing to collaborate more deeply with India. 

The policy has long been in development. It was originally supposed to be submitted at the end of 2017, but after four delays the first complete draft was only released to the public in 2019. The delays make some sense when considering how long overdue a comprehensive revision of education policy is. The last policy was released in 1986 and amended in 1992 - nearly 30 years ago.

The deliberation over the NEP has produced policy that if successful would reshape the Indian education system. The overarching goal is for India to have an education system that is, in the words of the plan itself, ‘second to none’ globally by 2040. The plan paints an image of an education system drawing inspiration from India’s past but not of the past. The plan references India’s formerly rich guru traditions and almost mythical ancient houses of learning at regular intervals but is firmly set on the future, looking to fix outdated practices while fully utilizing emerging technologies.

The NEP heralds change across the entire education system, spanning preschool to university. If the policy proves successful, the system will become more equitable, more accountable, better equipped and increasingly multidisciplinary even at the highest levels of education.

Improving equity and access to education stand among the key goals of the NEP and the targets are highly ambitious. They include a push to increase the national GER at all levels of education, notably aiming to reach a GER from preschool to secondary level of 100% by 2030. 

Particular focus is to be placed on ensuring women and socially and economically deprived groups (SEDGs) stay in education for longer, which include caste and tribal communities. 

To tackle the existing shortfalls in education provision for the less privileged, the NEP proposes that regions with a higher proportion of SEDGs become Special Education Zones (SEZs). While the NEP does not provide much direct clarification on what the development of SEZs will entail, it appears they are envisioned as priority areas that will receive more resources than well-developed regions.

Part of the strategy aligned with helping SEDGs is the intention to improve provision for localized education materials. While India’s linguistic diversity is perhaps a cultural asset of the country, it poses great challenges to education provision. The NEP hopes to resolve this by ensuring teaching staff speak the local languages of where they work, and developing learning resources localized to the regions where they are used.

The NEP calls for a strong shift to a multidisciplinary approach at all levels of education. Schools will be encouraged to provide academic and vocational courses in conjunction with each other while university education will strive to merge STEM with the humanities and arts. This policy is based on a premise that a multidisciplinary education tends to be better performing overall and creates better rounded graduates.

Another key part of the plan is the consolidation of schools into localized school hubs and smaller HEIs into large multidisciplinary institutions. There are a number of reasons for this change, including: improving the pooling and allocation of resources; simplifying the regulation of India’s extremely complex education environment; and address the currently highly fragmented nature of Indian HE through mergers and new expectation benchmarks for institutions.

On a national level the NEP is orientating towards a digital future for education, ultimately aiming to transform India into a “digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.” The use of new technologies including AI and machine learning are to be integrated into the classroom and education system, changing not only what students learn but also how they learn. 

Implications and challenges

As is inevitable with such ambitious plans, realizing the NEP poses significant challenges:

Finance

How realistic is the budgeting for the NEP? Earmarking 6% of GDP to government spending on education is a huge commitment that would place India among a select group of countries globally allocating such a high proportion of funds. Even if that target is reached, that money must cover extensive infrastructure development, major increases in recruitment and training costs, not to mention the administrative costs of completely overhauling the existing system.

Access and equity

The call for a more accessible and equitable education system is admirable, as it was in 1986 when they appeared in India’s previous education policy plan. Significant progress has been made, but the very fact targets published 30 years ago to some degree remain in place highlights that reaching the targets of the NEP could take time. 

Localization and language provision

Delivering localized provision at the intended scale will not be easy. India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world and it would be nigh impossible to provide quality resources and staff for every language. The question then is how local does localization need to go – will the government focus on India’s 22 official languages, the 121 languages with over 10,000 speakers, or delve even further? 

Digital divide

The NEP is committed to implementing widespread digital and distance learning solutions, yet a large proportion of the population still lacks access to computing equipment and internet. India’s enthusiasm for high-tech solutions does not always serve its poorest citizens well and the targets of the NEP will not be reached without taking this fact seriously.

The Scale of the NEP 

Not only does the NEP envision unprecedented change within the Indian education system, it also sets a relatively short timescale for this transformation. Most targets are set for either 2030 or 2040. While these may at first appear to be long timescales, they suddenly seem a lot shorter when linked to their targets – for example an 100% gross enrolment rate of all students from pre-primary to secondary by 2030. 

It is not fully clear from the NEP report what the areas of priority are. If all targets are equally weighted, trying to realize them all simultaneously will likely prove overwhelming. Encouraging however is the strong emphasis on ensuring gradual progress to certain goals, such as the proposed system to grant autonomy to affiliated colleges gradually as they receive higher levels of accreditation.