NEP 2020: Undermining the Constitutional Education Agenda?

Is the NEP Non-committal about Universalising School Education?

The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 established the ‘duty of the state’ via a central legislation to provide elementary education of equitable quality for all children in India. As a result, the number of out-of-school children (6–14 years) reduced from 13 million in 2006 to 6 million in 2014 (UNICEF, 2014). The Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) in elementary education improved from 82 per cent in 2000–2001 to 97 per cent in 2015–2016 (Department of School Education and Literacy, MoHRD, 2018). The NEP 2020 was expected to extend the RTE to include children from pre-school years to the age of 18, as was stated in the 2019 NEP draft (Department of School Education and Literacy, MoHRD, 2019).

The NEP 2020 however is silent on the RTE Act and its relation to Article 21A of the Indian Constitution that sought to achieve universalisation of elementary education through the modalities of ‘free’ and ‘compulsory’ education. It sets aside the RTE as an initiative of the past, ‘which laid down legal underpinnings for achieving universal elementary education’ and contributed to ‘attaining near-universal enrolment in elementary education’ (p. 4). The NEP emphasises the need to provide ‘equitable and quality education from the Foundational Stage through Class 12 to all children up to the age of 18, but it does not state what ‘suitable facilitating systems’ could enable this (p. 10).

By rearranging the curricular and pedagogical structure of school education from 10 + 2 to 5 + 3 + 3 + 4, the policy confounds the fact that the RTE has ‘not’ been extended. The fact is that over the last decade, the Indian state has not been able to deliver on implementing RTE. Only 13 per cent of schools across the country complied with the RTE norms in 2016–2017 (Rai & Majumder, 2019). This dropped to a mere 8 per cent in 2018–2019 with most schools lacking separate toilets for girls and boys, drinking water facilities and required pupil-teacher ratio. In its studied silence on the RTE, the NEP misses the fact that the share of India’s state schools has dropped to 65 per cent since the implementation of the RTE.

Apart from poor public investment over the years, a critical reason for the sharp decline in state schools is the practice of merging schools with low enrolments in the name of ‘consolidating’ resources. NITI Aayog’s SATH-E ¹ project has alone led to the merger of about 40,000 schools in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha in 2018 (Sharma, 2020). Shutting down schools in disadvantaged areas has led to limiting access for girls, a serious setback for gender justice which had been a major achievement in several states. The NEP legitimises the practice of school mergers by recommending the rationalisation of small schools that are considered ‘economically sub-optimal and operationally complex to run’ (p. 28).

The NEP’s silence on the RTE brings down the curtain on multiple attempts of the Government of India to dilute the Act. Critical amendments of the RTE in the past have allowed children to be detained at the primary stage of education, increasing the risk of an early drop-out. In fact, the Right to Education has been reduced to a mere ‘right to learning’ by introducing ‘learning outcomes’ as its central objective. By maintaining silence on the RTE, the NEP 2020 suggests that it is no longer committed to its implementation.

The Indian state’s inability to provide elementary education of equitable quality to all, has encouraged a tsunami of low-fee paying schools to fill this vacuum. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation & National Sample Survey Office, 2019) data suggests that close to 50 per cent of students in private schools pay less than ₹500 a month. A large number of these private schools do not fulfil RTE norms and violate the provision that ‘no child is liable to pay any kind of fee or charge or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education’ (GoI, 2009, p. 3).

During the pandemic, several low-fee paying private schools are closing down, as a large number of parents are pulling out their children in the face of loss of livelihoods. This is the kind of unsustainable school structure that the NEP is aiming to enhance. Advocates of school privatisation (CSF, 2020) are now lobbying for urgent government support for such schools, including a ‘relaxation of regulatory restrictions on operations and fees to allow the sector to recover from losses’ and ‘easy credit availability to private schools by including them as Micro, Small or Medium enterprises (MSMEs) so they can avail of loan guarantees.’

By making ‘requirements for schools less restrictive’, in order to augment ‘non-governmental philanthropic organisations’ and ‘to allow alternative models of education’, the NEP 2020 encourages further privatisation of elementary education.

In doing this, the policy makes way for regularising low-fee paying schools with poor infrastructure and untrained teachers, and legitimises one-teacher schools. Both of these are in violation of RTE norms but could provide the basis to mainstream over 100,000 ‘one-teacher’ Ekal Vidyalays spread across the country. As a result, states that have made considerable progress in fulfilling RTE norms and doing away with one teacher schools, for example, Himachal Pradesh, will be pushed back into institutionalising educational inequity.

Institutionalising Educational Inequality?

The Constitution of India established the categories of Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and later Other Backward Castes (OBCs) with the aim to provide social justice for the most disadvantaged. These provisions have been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court of India and a cap of 50 per cent placed on these reservations. While there are several sections of society including women, minorities, people with disabilities and the people living in poverty whose needs require policy redressal, the NEP 2020 mixes all these categories of disadvantaged and deprived groups into a single category––Socio-economically Disadvantaged Groups (SEDGs). When put together, the SEDGs make up over 80 per cent of India’s population.

In doing this, the NEP effectively obscures the idea that these are separate constitutionally-mandated categories. Institutionalising these could accelerate the Indian state’s abdication of responsibility and accountability towards its most vulnerable and socially disadvantaged. It could lead to the undermining of the foundational principles of social justice on which the Indian Republic was founded in 1950.

By proposing the creation of ‘Special Education Zones’ (SEZs) for SEDGs, the NEP effectively proposes to establish a segregated national school and teacher education system. One educational system for the 20 per cent more privileged ‘general’ population and another for the majority (80 per cent) of SEDGs. Informal education measures recommended for SEZs include short-term training courses for teachers, peer-tutoring and community-led voluntary efforts to support learners. This proposed institutionalisation of a segregated education system with poor teaching-learning and poor-quality teachers, if implemented, could lead to a deep retrogression in Indian education.

With over one million teacher vacancies in India’s schools and a large cadre of poorly qualified teachers, the NEP 2020 was expected to implement the Supreme Court’s Justice Verma Commission (Department of School Education and Literacy, MoHRD, 2012) recommendations. This includes enhanced public investment in teacher education, strengthened institutional capacity in states and curriculum redesign to teach for diversity and inclusion. NEP’s proposed single model of teacher education disregards the specific needs and concerns of diverse states and of different levels of education. It imposes a homogenised and standardised system of preparing teachers and an over-centralised regulatory structure that is sure to exacerbate centre-state conflict.

The primary constitutional mandate to deliver education lies with state governments. The NEP effectively abrogates this by proposing a heavily centralised system of regulation, funding, accreditation, curriculum and course design. India is a linguistically and culturally diverse nation. Taking power away from states that are organised on linguistic grounds, to develop and execute appropriate educational policy, amounts to weakening their educational mandate. Diluting the state government’s ability to address the linguistic and cultural identities of their people, could sow seeds of deep discord in the national fabric.

The measures suggested in the NEP indicate a lack of critical understanding of the ground realities of education in an unequal society. It does not provide a coherent perspective of the means of providing quality and equitable public education. Neither is it epistemically sound. It blurs the boundaries of the core constitutional values of equality, fraternity and justice, essential to the education of democratic and secular citizens.

The NEP 2020 may not be an implementation plan as the defenders of the policy may argue. But by remaining non-committal about the structural means that can enable equitable quality education for all, it betrays its own claim. Many policy measures that the NEP suggests violate the obligation of the state to draw on core constitutional values to develop democratic, secular citizens and an equitable society. In effect, it attempts to subvert the educational agenda of the Indian Constitution to ensure an equitable quality education for all.