PANAJI: The educationists, teachers, representatives of the industry and members of the NGOs on Saturday participated in the consultative meet on the draft national education policy 2016 and came out with observations, which would now take the shape of recommendations, to be soon forwarded to the Union ministry of human resource development.
The one-day meet, jointly organised by Mushtifund Saunstha, Don Bosco, and Konkan Development Society, and held at the Mushtifund Saunstha auditorium in the city discussed early childhood care and education, school education – primary and secondary education, higher education, teacher development, curriculum and evaluation, skills in education and employability, open learning and adult education, and financing of education including public-private partnership.
Amit Narkar, the executive director of the National Centre for Advocacy Studies, who facilitated the deliberations among the stakeholders, in his address stated that the TSR Subramanian committee, constituted by the central government in 2015, for formulation of national education policy, submitted its report on April 30, 2016.
“However, the government neither made the report public, nor acknowledged that such a report existed,” Narkar added, pointing out that the report eventually leaked in May 2016, and the draft national educational policy 2016, released by the central government in July 2016, found in it many of the inputs from the TSR Subramanian committee report.
“The draft national educational policy is however vague in nature,” he remarked.
It was also informed that there are 13 themes pertaining to school education given in the draft national education policy 2016 for consultations, while 20 themes about higher education.
The last date to submit the recommendations to the Union HRD ministry is September 15, 2016.
Maintaining that the national education policy 2016 will decide the educational and developmental future of present and future generations of children and youth, and overall development of India, Narkar said the draft policy is manageable and readable, and is further concise and comprehensive. He however raised questions as to why the policy was initially not made available in Indian languages, and not released in print format.
Narkar said the draft policy has fairly progressive vision-mission and speaks about preparing ‘framework for action.’
“However, it erroneously equates ancient Indian education to vedic system, does not mention about National Curriculum Framework 2005, links education to India becoming world superpower, ignores social justice aspect, overemphasises on skills and vocational education thus restricting the youth to livelihood by sidelining the importance of higher education, dilutes Right to Education Act, and finally speaks about public-private partnership for financing education,” he observed.
“The national education policy 2016 should be seen in context of larger policy paradigm linked to Skill India, amendment to the Child Labour Act, and textile industry policy,” Narkar stated, predicting that 80 per cent of content on the draft national education policy would be retained in the final draft policy.
