SHILLONG, March 27: Is Meghalaya really lodged at the bottom of the pyramid of education in the Northeast? Is the National Education Policy (NEP) truly “national”? Is it mandatory for every state to follow the NEP? Or is it a mere wish list?
These pertinent questions featured at an engaging panel discussion on NEP on March 26 and evoked some revealing answers from a set of eminent educationists actively involved with the formulation and implementation of the NEP.
In June last year, the then Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had announced that Performance Analysis Index put Meghalaya at the bottom of the education ladder in the Northeast. The state government did not question the authenticity of such finding. An embarrassed Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma described the state of education in the state as a matter of “concern”.
At the panel discussion, when the moderator former education minister Manas Chaudhuri drew the attention to the claim of the Union Minister, panelist Dr GD Sharma, who had a hand in scripting the NEP, replied with an emphatic “no”. By no stretch of imagination can Meghalaya be justifiably condemned as the worst performing state. He questioned the methodology for arriving at such dubious conclusions and thundered that he was prepared to engage himself in debate with the Education Ministry. In fact, he hailed Meghalaya as “hub of education” in the NE.
To the moderator’s another question on whether the NEP can be called truly “national”, particularly because some states had refused to adopt the policy, the octogenarian Dr Sharma tried to defend it saying that since the NEP was adopted by the Parliament after consultations at various levels, it would be just and proper to call it a national document. Another panelist Dr S Mani from Tamil Nadu informed that in his state the term NEP cannot even be uttered because the state government has announced in the assembly its decision to author its own education policy.
Another panelist Dr Vijay Kumar of Puducherry reminded that West Bengal, too, had rejected the NEP. It was also pointed out that education being in the concurrent list of the Constitution, the onus of implementing education policies lay equally on both governments. Eventually there was unspoken unanimity that NEP is not national, after all.
An issue that popped up at the panel discussion was the need for an elucidation of the term “Indian ethos” which was going to be incorporated in the curriculum under the NEP. When pointedly asked to define what was meant by Indian ethos, to everyone’s surprise, Dr Sharma replied “I have no answer”.
As for what the NEP meant by “tribal knowledge and indigenous and traditional ways of learning”, these are still nebulous ideas which will have to be sorted out at the state level.
The teachers of the small states like Meghalaya have some trepidation over the NEP which lays down that henceforth recruitment of teachers would be centralised under the care of National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) which has been mandated to enunciate the qualification and other parameters for such recruitment.
Since the NEP espouses to lift the standard of teaching by adopting modern pedagogy, the aspirants are left wondering if their dream of becoming teachers is going to be dashed by applying national yardstick. To this Dr Vijay Kumar clarified that things were still in a nascent state and no clarity had emerged so far on the modalities of such exercise. The consensus was that this is a grey area.
Every panelist repeatedly emphasized that there was no certainty when the implementation of the policies would begin or when the revised curriculum and new teachers training, attraction of new talents for taking up teaching as a mission would become a reality.
The panel discussion which was part of a two-day symposia organized by PGT College of Shillong, where institutional heads, senior teachers and officers of state education department were the eager audience who were left with the abiding thought that the NEP raises more questions than it provides answers!
Is it then a utopian wish list of the current dispensation in Delhi?